Call Me Katie
by Calyn
Summary: Meet Katharine "Katie" Jones. She and her mother, father, and little sister Coraline have just moved from Michigan to Oregon. When Katie receives a doll from the strange neighbor boy, what will happen to her and Coraline?
1. Teal and Yellow, Black and Blue

This is my first Coraline fic. I shamelessly admit it was inspired by "Coraline Remake" and "Another Coraline Remake" (ACN now deleted). I am doing my best to not rip off them. At the time I started this I had not read the book, so this is based completely off the movie.

Coraline is 11, almost 12; Katie is 15, almost 16. I made their birthdays close to each other, and the story takes place during an unseasonably warm January. I try and update when I finish a chapter. Just don't expect a regular schedule.

I own Katie and the bits of story that are mine. Everything else belongs to Neil Gaiman, Henry Selick, and all those people. And yes, I left the prologue off. It just felt _awkward_ when I was writing it.

* * *

Chapter 1: Teal and Yellow, Black and Blue

A black cat with blue eyes watched from the underbrush as a green moving van pulled away from the pink house that held the "Pink Palace Apartments." The top and lower levels were occupied, but someone had just moved into the ground floor.

He heard a creak and turned. A door at the side of the house had opened. A young girl stepped out and looked around. Her hair was bobbed and an odd shade of blue that somehow fit, and there was a dragonfly-shaped barrette at one side. Her eyes were light brown and she wore a yellow raincoat and yellow boots, and black-and-white striped pants. Several inches of a pink dress stuck out below her coat. A pink-violet messenger bag was slung over her right shoulder. She looked excited to be outside in the misty air, and for a moment it seemed she was about to leap down the stairs.

Then she frowned and looked back into the house.

"Come _on_, Katie!" she said impatiently.

"_Give_ me a sec, Coraline," another voice said crossly. "I have to _tie_ my shoes, remember? Ah...there!" There was a double thud and an exclamation as someone stood up.

Another girl came out and shut the door behind her. She reached back to her neck and pulled two long black braids out of her teal raincoat, then bent down to slip rubber covers onto her sneakers. She wore jeans instead of pants, and her coat was cut differently than the other girl's, allowing her green sweater to show through a v-neck. Since she was a few years older than her sister, it wasn't surprising to see that she was several inches taller. She smiled down at the younger girl, black eyes sparkling.

"Lead on, O Great Explorer." Even though Katie Jones was the elder, she enjoyed watching her sister's enthusiastic adventurousness and was content to follow her—at least, every so often.

The blue-haired girl led the way down the stairs and to the gate of an oddly shaped garden, rocky and bare. A large bush with red leaves grew next to the gate, and she reached into the center and pulled out a forked branch. She plucked a few extra leaves off and held one end of the fork in each hand, and closed her eyes, waiting for something.

"Well, not so sure I believe in it, but that's one way to find a well," Katie murmured to herself, quietly enough that her sister couldn't hear her. Coraline turned and began to jog through the garden, Katie behind her. The cat slunk out of the bush and silently followed them.

The girls opted not to use the bridge in the center of the stony garden, but instead ran along the wall of the empty pond. They left the garden and went up the twisting path on the steep hill behind. When they were high above the house, the cat looked over a group of rocks on the hillside and dislodged a few small stones. It leaped down out of view.

The noise made by the rocks caught the girls' attention, and they stopped and looked up. They saw only tall pines against the sky and a pile of rocks in the middle of grass that was brown and yellow and green.

"Hello?" Katie said.

No answer.

"Who's there?" Coraline called.

Still no answer. The two girls looked at each other.

"Hm." Katie bent down and picked up one of the small stones that had fallen. She hurled it upwards, and it bounced off a rock before falling down behind it. A angry snarl erupted, and the girls gasped. They took off running farther up the path. As they disappeared beyond a bend, the cat poked its head up and watched them.

The two girls ran down a hill and into an old apple orchard, throwing fearful glances over their shoulders. As they ran past it, an old wagon bounced and a few old apples fell off. They finally slowed down at the top of a little rise, where there were an old stump and a ring of mushrooms. Coraline didn't notice she had stopped inside the ring. They stood there breathing heavily and looking anxiously around.

Something rustled the grass behind them, and both spun with double gasps. Since their backs were to the stump, they didn't see when the cat which had been following them leaped onto it. It meowed loudly.

Katie and Coraline screamed and whipped around, Coraline dropping her rod. They stopped when they saw it was only a house-size cat and not something larger and more dangerous. The cat stretched.

"You scared us to death!" Katie exclaimed crossly.

"You mangy thing," Coraline added, picking her rod back up and taking her bag off. She tossed it several feet forward. "We're just looking for an old well. Know it?"

The cat blinked and bowed its head.

"Not talking, huh?" said Coraline.

The cat was silent. Katie smiled.

Coraline shrugged. "Fine, then." She lifted her rod and closed her eyes, spinning slowly in a circle. "Magic dowser, magic dowser, show me...the well!" she shouted.

A loud air horn blew in the pine stand at the top of the hill behind them. Both girls jumped and spun towards the sound. In the trees a grotesque figure with three glowing green eyes in a skull reared up on a motorbike. Lightning flashed, thunder cracked, and the engine revved. Katie and Coraline gasped and the cat's eyes went wide. The figure zoomed down the irregular dirt hill in a series of zigzags, pedaling quickly. It headed straight for Coraline, pulling a wheelie on the way.

"Aii yi yi!" Katie yelled, jumping back.

"Aaaahhh!" Coraline screamed, holding her dowsing rod up like a baseball bat. The cat leaped off the stump. "Get away from me!"

The figure sped past her, a skeleton hand reaching out and grabbing hold of the rod as Coraline tried to swing at the figure. Her grip held for a moment and she was jerked backwards, stumbling. Then it broke and she fell into the mud, still inside the ring of mushrooms. As the figure passed the stump it leaped up off the bike, which tipped to one side. The figure landed solidly and immediately climbed up on the stump, still holding the rod. There was more thunder and lightning as it turned a crank on the side of its head, causing its eyes to rotate while Coraline fearfully got to her feet. Mud stuck to her raincoat.

The two girls stared up at the figure, trembling in fright as its eyes rotated several times. Then they blinked out and the figure tossed its head up. Coraline and Katie stared as the skull and eyes became a mask with three different length microscope lenses that came down over the face like a visor. The skeleton hands were gloves, and the crank turned the lenses. The figure wore jeans, and a black shin-length fireman's coat with silver stripes at the knees, chest, and mid- and upper-forearms. The collar stuck up in the back. On its feet were what appeared to be old brown lace-up shoes that were too big for the feet. When the mask flew up, instead of a monster they saw a boy of about Coraline's age, with skin the color of hot chocolate with a lot of milk and brown eyes.

He waved the rod around in various different positions of examination and cocked his head at them. "Ooh. Let me guess. You're from Texas or Utah, someplace dried-out and barren, right?" They stared at him, and he continued. "I heard about 'water witching' before, but it doesn't make sense." He shook the rod in one hand. "I mean, it's just an ordinary branch."

"It's a _dowsing rod_," Coraline snapped, striding forward. She slapped the boy's knee hard.

"Owww!" The mask slipped back down over his face and he let go of the rod, hopping on one foot and rubbing his knee. Coraline leaped into the air and caught it. The boy pulled his mask off and threw it to one side, revealing curly brown hair that stuck out from his head on both sides. It almost made him look like he was wearing a very short, very narrow-brimmed sombrero. The cat leaped up onto the stump.

"And we don't like being stalked, not by psycho nerds, _or_ their cats!" Coraline tilted her head until it was nearly perpendicular to the ground, imitating the cat.

"He's not really _my_ cat," said the boy. "He's kind of feral. You know, wild?" He waved his hands in the air and then went down on one knee to pet the cat. "Of course, I do feed him every night, and sometimes he'll come to my window and bring me little dead things." He smiled as the cat leaped off the stump.

Katie rolled her eyes and sighed in exasperation. "Look. _We're_ from Pontiac."

"Huh?" said the boy, looking down at her.

"Michigan?" Katie clarified.

"Yeah," added Coraline. "And if I'm a 'water witch,' then _where's_ the secret well?" She stamped one foot.

"You stomp too hard and you'll fall in it!" He pointed at the mushroom ring.

Coraline looked down. "Oh!" She jumped out of the ring.

The boy leaped down from the stump and scraped away some of the dirt inside the ring. "See?" He knocked on the exposed wood and there was a hollow thudding. "It's supposed to be so deep, if you fell to the bottom and looked up, you'd see a sky full of stars in the middle of the day."

"Cool," said Katie with interest.

The boy placed a stick over a rock and inserted the end of the stick under the cover of the well. He pushed his foot down on it and the cover came up with a creak, causing all the dirt in the ring to slide away. He removed the stick and the cover fell back into place. Katie and Coraline got down to look at it.

"'m surprised she let you move in," the boy commented, looking at the pink house down below. "My grandma? She owns the Pink Palace. Won't rent to people with kids."

Katie looked up. "What do you mean?"

"We—w—well, I'm not supposed to talk about it," the boy stammered. "I'm Wybie. Wybie Lovat." He shook hands with both girls.

"_Wybie_?" said Coraline.

"Short for _Wyborne_," said Wybie, shrugging. "Not _my_ idea, of course. What'd you two get saddled with?"

Katie rolled her eyes. "We weren't 'saddled' with anything. I'm Katie."

"And I'm Coraline."

Wybie was chasing the cat around. "Katie and Caroline what?"

"_Coraline_!" the younger girl said in frustration. She stamped her foot. "Katie and Coraline Jones."

"Hm," said Wybie, as he caught up to the cat and bent down to pet it. "It's not very scientific, but I heard that an ordinary name like Katie or Caroline can lead people to have ordinary expectations about a person."

"Nnnhh."

Katie looked at her sister. "Oh, great, here we go again with the name thing," she muttered.

"Wyborne!"

Katie, Coraline, and the cat all looked up. The voice had come out of the distance.

"I think I heard someone calling you, Wyborne," Katie remarked.

"What? I—I—I didn't hear anything."

"And you say that while you're wringing your hands and looking around nervously?" Coraline pointed out flatly. "Nice try. Oh, I _definitely_ heard someone, _Why-Were-You-Born_."

"Wyborne!"

Wybie blinked fearfully and swallowed hard. "Grandma!" he whispered. He chuckled uncomfortably and picked up his mask, and set his bicycle upright. "Well, great to meet a Michigan water witch and her sister."

Coraline glared at him, thumping her rod into her hand like it was a weapon she was waiting to use.

Wybie put the mask on and climbed onto his bike. "But...I'd wear gloves next time."

"Why?" asked Katie.

"Cause that dowsing rod of hers?" he said to the older girl, gesturing to Coraline. "It's, ah, poison oak."

"Aaah!" Coraline yelped, dropping the stick like it was on fire and frantically wiping her hands on her raincoat. Katie stifled a giggle.

Wybie pulled his mask down and quickly pedaled off down the hill and out of sight. Coraline looked after him and stuck her tongue out. The cat looked up at her, shook its head, and ran off.

"What a jerk."

"Oh, I don't know," Katie chuckled. "I think you just might end up liking him."

"Eww, Katie!" Coraline jumped at her sister and they both fell into the mud. "That's disgusting!"

"Is not."

"Is too!"

"Is not."

"Is too!"

Katie laughed again as they rolled over, getting mud in each other's hair. "Corrie, you should have seen some of the 'happy couples' at _my_ school. They were totally disgusted by each other at first."

"Shut up, Katie-Kat!"

After a few more tussles, they finally got up and stared at each other. "Oh, man," Coraline groaned. "Mom's gonna be so mad. She'll probably make us wash our own clothes. And our hair. Outside. With the hose and bar soap. Even though it's January."

"But even if she did, you still wouldn't feel sorry about tackling me in the mud, now would you?" Katie said, eyes dancing.

A sly grin crept onto Coraline's face. "No, I wouldn't. And since the clothes are gonna have to get washed anyway..."

"_Oh_ no you don't," Katie said, backing away. "I am quite dirty enough for one day—ahh!" She took off running back to the Pink Palace, Coraline behind her and reaching out to grab her, both girls laughing their heads off.


	2. A Little What?

Chapter 2: A Little What?

The next day Katie was standing at the kitchen window in her raincoat and rubbers, looking out at the rain. "Me and Coraline almost fell down a well yesterday, Mom," she announced, leaning a seed packet labeled "Green Peppers" against the window.

"Uh-huh," said Melanie Jones distractedly, typing at a somewhat alarming rate of speed on her laptop at the kitchen table.

"We would have _died_." She put two more packets up, one of Bleeding Hearts and one of Pumpkin, and waited for a reaction.

"That's nice."

Katie put a final packet up, this one for Squash. "Hmf. So..." She turned around. "Can I go out? I think it's perfect weather for gardening."

"No, Katie," Mel replied, looking up for a moment and shaking her head. "Rain makes mud. Mud makes a mess."

"Couldn't I take my rubbers off at the door?" Katie protested. "Then I wouldn't get mud in the house."

"In which case it would come in on your shoes, or your raincoat, or your clothes. And make a mess. Objection overruled."

"But Mom, me and Coraline want stuff _growing_ when our friends come to visit," Katie complained, slamming her hands on the table. "Isn't that why we moved here?"

"Something like that," Mel said tiredly. "But then, we had the _accident_." She looked up at Katie and pointed at the soft neck brace she still wore.

"_You_ turned _left_ when the _navigator_—yours truly, the one with the _map—_told you to turn _right_, so it's not _my _fault you hit that truck!" Katie exclaimed angrily.

"I never said it was."

Katie put her hands on her hips and glared at her mother. "I can't believe this. You and Dad get _paid_ to write about plants—and you hate dirt."

"Katharine, I don't have time for you right now." Mel glared right back. "And you still have unpacking to do. _Lots _of unpacking."

"That sounds _exciting_," Katie said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. There was a brief silence. Mel broke it.

"Oh, some kid left this on the front porch." She reached down and handed Katie a long, thin, flexible package with a newspaper wrapping.

Katie pulled the first layer of newspaper aside and found a note.

**Hey Katesey,  
****Look what I found  
in Gramma's trunk.  
Look familiar?  
****Wybie**

Katie groaned and rolled her eyes. "_Katesey_," she muttered angrily. "Next time he tries that I am _so_ going to knock him off that ridiculous bike of his."

"What's his name, anyway?" her mother asked, eyes never leaving the laptop screen, fingers never ceasing to fly.

"_Wybie_," Katie scoffed. "Short for Wyborne." She unfolded the newspaper and blinked.

A doll with black button eyes, long black braids, and a teal v-neck raincoat stared back at her. A green sweater showed through the raincoat's neckline and the doll had jeans and black sneakers with real rubber covers.

"A little _me_? That's weird."

Her mom looked up with interest for a moment, then returned to typing. "What did you say his name was, again?"

"Wybie," Katie repeated, putting the paper on the table. "And normally I'd say I'm way too old for dolls, but..." She shrugged. "This is actually kinda cool."

"Hey, Mom, Katie." Coraline stuck her head into the kitchen. She was wearing her raincoat and boots as well. "Can I go out? It's perfect—"

"No, Coraline."

"Gee, where have I heard _this_ conversation before?" Katie muttered to herself.

"Like I told your sister, rain makes mud and mud makes a mess."

Coraline rolled her eyes, and noticed that Katie was holding something. "Watcha got, Katester?"

Katie hid the thing behind her back. "You'll _never_ guess, Corrie."

"What?"

"Guess."

"I don't want to."

"Fine." Katie held the doll out, facing her sister. Coraline stared at it.

.

_**There are two? Excellent. Another must be made...**_

.**  
**

"Where'd you get that?" Coraline asked, her eyes narrowing.

"Wybie."

"You're kidding, right?"

Katie shook her head. "Nope. He left a note." She picked it up and waved it at her sister. The paper rustled loudly and Mel frowned.

"Coraline, Katie, I need to concentrate. Go unpack. Leave me alone."

Katie looked over at Coraline. "Come on." As they walked out the door she whispered, "We'll go ask Dad." They went down the hall and stopped at a doorway. Coraline pushed it open and looking in, the girls saw Charlie Jones working at an old computer, surrounded by stacks and stacks of boxes that towered high above him. The computer was so old that it had bright green letters on a black screen, and he was typing rapidly using only one finger on each hand. He wore faded blue jeans and a faded green "Michigan State" sweatshirt, as well as half-glasses pushed far down his nose.

"Hey, Dad," said Katie. "How's the writing going?"

He didn't respond. On the left, Katie tapped her foot, hands on hips. On the right, Coraline swayed back and forth. They waited.

"Dad!" Coraline finally exclaimed, snapping her fingers. Charlie flinched and looked at their reflections on the computer screen. They showed up well against the black.

"Hello, Coraline, Katie, and..." He looked back at them. "Katie _doll_?"

All three looked down at the doll in Katie's right hand. She shrugged. "Yup."

"Erm, isn't it a little...that is to say, uh...aren't you a little, you know, _old_ for dolls?" Charlie hedged.

Katie giggled at his obvious discomfort. "Usually, yeah, but I kind of like this one. It looks like me. Do you know where the garden tools are?"

Charlie resumed typing. "It's, ah...it's pouring out there, isn't it?"

"Hmf," said Coraline. "It's just _raining._"

"Mm, what'd the boss say?"

Katie held her doll up in front of her and shook her finger at it and yelled, "_Don't even_ _**think**__ about going out—_" She shook the doll. "—_Katie and Coraline Jones!_"

Charlie was unaffected by Katie's dramatic and exaggerated paraphrase of Mel. "Mm, then you won't need the tools."

"Da-ad!" Katie complained.

"Ughhh." Coraline pushed the study door and it creaked loudly. The sisters looked at each other slyly, and Coraline began to swing back and forth. The door squealed gratingly each time she moved, and this time it was Charlie who groaned.

"Ohhhh..." He grabbed a small notebook and a pen off the desk and spun in his chair to face them. "You know, this house is a hundred and fifty years old."

"So?" Katie asked.

"So explore it. Go out and count all the doors and windows and write that down on...list everything that's blue." He thrust the items at his older daughter. "Just..._let me work! _"

Katie sighed and took them. "C'mon, Coraline. Let's go." They walked away, Katie swinging her doll, both frowning. Farther down the hall they stopped. Ahead of her sister, Coraline pulled her coat off and threw it on the floor with a low growl, and kicked off her boots. Katie looked down at the pile of yellow as she removed her own coat and hung it up in the closet.

"You know," she remarked, "you should really hang that up."

"Do it yourself if you're so keen on it," Coraline retorted.

Katie rolled her eyes. "Don't blame _me_ if Mom docks you for it later. I go on record as informing you that you need to hang it up," she announced. But quietly, so her parents couldn't hear. "Orange stripes go well with your hair," she added, referring to Coraline's shirt. "I think it's got something to do with complementary colors."

"So why are purple sweaters the complement of black hair?" Coraline shot back.

"I dunno, maybe cause anything goes with black?" Katie tilted her head to one side and gave a sweet smile.

Coraline shook her head. "Katie, you're hopeless—agh!" She almost tripped, and then jumped several times.

"Coraline?"

"Stupid carpet," she growled. There was a wrinkle on each side of her feet. "Darn thing won't go away."

"We'll get it later," Katie said as she walked up. "No mere rug shall be allowed to defeat the sisters Jones, fearless explorers and conquerors of strange boys with skeleton masks."

And Coraline had to smile at that.


	3. Exploration

You may have realized already that I'm not one of the people who tries to keep the story exactly the same, but this chapter (and probably the next one too) is really going to hit that home. I also hope it shows that Katie and Coraline are a lot closer than other siblings I've read appear to be.

Katie's song is the chorus to a song we sing at camp. So I don't own it.

* * *

Chapter 3: Exploration

_12 leaky windows..._

Katie and Coraline walked up to a large window, subdivided into many smaller panes. Katie swiped a hole on the misty glass so she and Coraline could see through, and a smaller one at about waist height so the doll could see through. The girls peered out and sighed as they watched the rain fall.

"Drat it all, I wish we were out there," Coraline said grumpily.

"Oh really?" Katie replied. "Cause if we were, I'd be doing my rain dance. And we all know how much you _love_ that." She stuck the doll in her pocket and began waving her arms and jumping around.

"I'm siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingin' in the raaaaaaaaaain, juuuust siiiiiiiiiiingin' in the raaaaaaaaain, what a glooooooooooorious feeeeeeeeeeling," she trilled in an exaggeratedly ridiculous manner. "Aaaaaaah oo ah oo ah oo ah ah. Oooooo ah oo ah oo ah ah." Katie kicked her feet into the air and spun around. Her braids flew out. "Yahoo!"

Coraline grabbed one braid in each hand. "Giddyap, girl!" she cried, and jumped on Katie's back.

"Aii yi yi!" Katie yelped. "You're supposed to _warn_ me when you do that!" She managed to spin around a couple times with Coraline riding piggyback, then collapsed.

"I _did_ warn you," Coraline pointed out as she wiggled out from underneath her sister. "I said giddyap."

"You are so—never mind. Looks like there's...uh...twelve windows in this room." Katie wrinkled her nose. "And they leak. Great." She wrote it down on her pad, and as if to emphasize what she'd written, a drop of water fell and blurred part of the page. "Argh."

.

_20 disgusting! bugs..._

The two girls walked into what would become their parents' bedroom. There wasn't much in it: a bed with a red-and-pale-yellow striped blanket, a rickety old chair, Mel's ironing board and iron, and a nightstand with an alarm clock and picture frame on it.

"They've got a bathroom? Let's check it out," said Coraline. They walked in and discovered...

"It's all pink!" Katie giggled. "The walls, the toilet, the sink, the bathtub..."

"Oh, Dad is going to _love_ this bathroom," Coraline added, smiling. "What kind of shower is it, though?" She pulled aside the plastic curtain.

"_Eww!_" both girls yelped. There were centipedes swarming over the wall. Coraline jumped in and began swatting them while Katie stared in awe. When Coraline was done, she shuddered at her hands and went to turn the faucet on.

"Coraline, wait—" Katie tried to warn her sister, but it was too late. The piston of the faucet was up, and instead of water coming out of the tap, it poured down on Coraline's head from the shower head.

"Aahhh!" She flailed wildly. Katie reached in and hit the piston, getting wet herself. Both of them shook their heads, flinging water out of their hair like dogs would.

"How 'bout we go downstairs now?" Coraline said, gritting her teeth.

"Fine by me," Katie answered, as she wrote down the bug incident.

.

_One rusty old water heater..._

Katie and Coraline jumped down the stairs two at a time, like rabbits, both feet together. When they were almost to the bottom, they saw the double wrinkle that had annoyed Coraline earlier.

Coraline looked at her sister. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Oh, absolutely. One, two—"

On 'three' they both jumped the last few stairs and each landed on a wrinkle. The wrinkles settled out and disappeared. "Awesome!" Katie cheered. "Aaaaand the sisters Jones score again!"

"Hey, Katie, look." Coraline pointed at a door under the staircase. "I think it opened when we landed."

"Well, if it wasn't closed tightly, that would make sense. According to the laws of physics, a constant vibration at the exact right frequency can set up a resonance wave that—mmph!"

Coraline had put one hand over her sister's mouth. "We are exploring. Save school stuff for when we actually have to go _back_, silly."

Katie nodded. "Mmph. Mn uh ich o in o ee ah?"

"Huh?" Coraline took her hand away.

"Can you take your hand away now?" Katie translated. They walked into the little room and were confronted by an old water heater with a brownish-red color cast. On it was taped a sign that said: "HOT. LOOKOUT."

"Huh, nothing interesting after all," Katie said with disappointment as she tucked her doll back under her arm and wrote down "one rusty old water heater" under "20 disgusting! bugs". As they went out, Coraline pushed the light button off.

The lights flickered as they started to walk down the hallway, and then they heard Charlie starting to panic.

"No. No, no, no. No."

The girls looked back.

"_Noooooooooo_—"

"Uh oh!" Katie darted back to the little room. She discovered that above the light switch was a paper label, one end of which had fallen down.

"—_ooooooooooo_—"

When she pushed it back on, the paper read, 'DON'T PUSH!' Katie yelped, and hit the 'on' button as fast as she could. The lights came back on steady.

"—_ooo_..."

Katie slammed the door closed and leaned against it. Then she and Coraline walked away, nervously glancing behind them.]

.

_One boy, four windows, and...another door?_

They walked into another room, this time the parlor. It was still fairly empty. It had a couch, a chair, a table, a wardrobe on one side, a circular rug in the middle, and a fireplace with its requisite implements. There was a large packing box against the left wall, and on the table was a box labeled "Mom's snow globes—living room."

"Sweet," Coraline whispered as she and Katie walked over to the table. "I love these."

"I concur." Katie sat her doll against the box and they ferried several snow globes to the mantel. "Ooh, I want to shake this one," she said, picking up a snow globe from the Detroit Zoo. "It's Mom's favorite." Katie shook it and put it back gently, and they both looked up. Over the fireplace was a painting. In it there was a blond boy, with an old-fashioned haircut and old-fashioned blue and white clothes, holding an empty ice cream cone. He was looking down sadly at the ground, where the ice cream from his cone had fallen.

"Hm," said Katie, pulling out the notebook. "One boring blue boy, in a painfully boring painting. Four incredibly boring windows. And no more doors," she added as she and Coraline counted. They walked back to the table and Katie reached for her doll.

"Huh?" It wasn't there. Katie put the notebook and pen on the table. "Alright, little me. Where are you hiding?" She and Coraline scoured the floor all around, but the doll wasn't there. "Where on—what the heck?" Katie stared.

The doll was lying on its side, several feet away, sticking halfway out from behind the big box by the wall. Katie walked over and knelt down to pick it up.

"_Huh?_"

"What's wrong, Katie?" Coraline asked, confused. She jumped out of the way as the doll came skittering backwards across the floor. Katie shoved the box aside and knelt in front of...a door? No, it couldn't be a _real_ door, there was wallpaper over it. Why would anyone cover up a real door?

"Cool," Coraline said as she knelt down beside her sister. Katie was feeling the raised outline. "Hey Mom!" she yelled. "Where does this door go?"

"I'm really, _really_ busy!" They could hear the faint sound of typing coming from the kitchen, like the raindrops falling on the roof, the same gentle pitter-patter.

Coraline traced the keyhole with a finger. "I think it's locked!"

They both called out, "_Please_?" and heard their mother groan, then her footsteps coming down the hall.

Mel Jones stomped angrily into the room, planted her hands on her hips, and looked at the section of wallpaper. She then looked at her daughters, crossed her arms, and drummed her fingers on her arm. "Will you girls _stop_ pestering me if I do this for you?" she asked crossly, gesturing at the door.

Coraline begged like a puppy—hands folded, mouth turned down, head tilted to one side—and she _whimpered_.

"Fine." Mel stalked back to the kitchen, Coraline turned to face the door, and Katie collapsed in giggles. "Mom just can't refuse that face, can she?" the older girl gasped. "Good thing you don't use it too often, or she'd catch on."

Coraline slapped her sister's arm playfully.

"Ow!"

They could hear Mel rummaging through keys. When she came back she had an old-fashioned black key whose handle looked like a button. She pierced the wallpaper with it and then dragged it along the cracks, slitting the paper apart. Katie and Coraline watched in anticipation as Mel inserted the key into the lock, twisted it, and pulled the door open to reveal...

"Bricks?" said Katie, disappointed. "I don't get it."

Mel sighed. "They must have closed this off when they divided up the house." She stood up.

"You're kidding. And why is the door so small?" Coraline asked.

Mel turned in the doorway and retorted angrily, "We made a deal, _zip it_!" She hurried back to the kitchen. Coraline and Katie stared for a few moments.

"You didn't lock it," Katie called out.

"Arrrrrgh!" they heard Mel exclaim, and then a slam and a clink as a drawer shut.

"Oh, well," Katie sighed. "So much for that."

She shut the door.


	4. Dinnertime

Chapter 4: Dinnertime

That night at dinner, Charlie was singing.

**Oh, my twitchy-witchy girls  
****I think you are so nice.****  
I give you bowls of porridge  
****and I give you bowls of ice...  
cream.**

He sang very out of tune as he plopped mounds of steaming gelatinous multicolored _something_ onto his daughters' plates. They shuddered and pushed the plates across the table.

"Why don't _you_ ever cook, Mom?" Coraline asked sulkily, slumping forward onto her arms.

Mel sighed. "Coraline, we've been—"

" 'Through this before.' " Katie imitated her mother. " 'Your father cooks, I clean, and you and Katie stay out of the way,' " she said, ticking the list off on her fingers.

"That's enough, young lady, or you can go to your room without supper!" Mel snapped. Raising her right hand, she added, "I swear, I'll go food shopping as soon as we finish the catalog."

"And it would be such a horrible punishment, going without UFOs," Katie whispered to Coraline.

"UFOs?"

"Unidentified Food Objects. You know, those things we see on our plates every night?"

Mel frowned at her daughters. "Stop whispering." She pushed the plates back over to the girls. "Try some of the chard. You need a vegetable."

Katie lifted some of the green stuff on her fork. "It looks more like _slime_ to me." She dropped her fork, and it stuck upright in the quivering mass of UFO.

"Oh, _yeah_," Coraline agreed.

"Well," said Charlie, smiling. "It's slime or bedtime, fusspots. Now what's it gonna be?"

Katie and Coraline looked at each other, then at the Katie-doll. It was sitting on a chair in between them, propped up on several thick books. "Think they're trying to poison us?" Coraline asked the doll. Katie reached behind it and made it nod.

"Well, I guess it's bedtime then," Katie announced, and she stood up and grabbed her doll. "Have a great time defeating the UFOs, Mom and Dad."

"The what?" asked Charlie, but the girls were already out of the room.

"Argh!" Katie threw her doll on her bed. "I hate going to bed early!" In one motion she grabbed her laptop case off the floor and flopped onto her bed. After unzipping the bag, she pulled out the computer and booted it up.

"But it's better than having to eat Dad's UFOs," Coraline pointed out. She was putting her pajamas on. They were dark orange, with red and yellow polka dots and light blue buttons on her shirt. "And just what do you think you're doing?"

"I'm gonna vainly attempt to check my email. Not like there's internet around here—no way! Wybie's grandma, I _love_ you!" Katie jumped off the bed and started dancing around. "Ohhhh snap, ohhhh snap, ohhhh snap, ohhhh snap." Katie was cha-cha-ing with every repetition.

"What is _wrong_ with you?"

"Thou shalt not rain on my parade," Katie admonished. "I've got internet, oh yeah. I've got internet, oh yeah," she sing-songed happily. "Ms. Lovat is _awesome_."

Coraline bounced up and down on her bed excitedly. "You mean this house has wi-fi _we _can use?"

"Why do you _think_ I'm jumping around? Yes, glorious yes, now I can email my friends! You can have a turn tomorrow," Katie added quickly, seeing that Coraline was about to tackle her for possession of the laptop.

Coraline whined. "Aw, how come you get to use it tonight?"

Katie rolled her eyes. "One: because I'm older. Two: because I discovered the wee-fee—"

"Wye-fye."

"Wee-fee."

"Wye-fye."

"Wee-fee."

"Wye-fye."

"Wee-fee, I win."

Coraline stuck out her tongue. "Only for now."

"_Anyway_, three: because I own the laptop. Which is really a good enough reason even without the other two."

"Like I haven't heard that one before," Coraline snapped. Katie's protectiveness of her laptop had always been one of the few sore spots between the sisters.

Katie's face softened. "Actually, I really do mean it when I say you can use it tomorrow. If you wake up early, you can even use it without waking me up. If you're lucky, you can get everything you need done before Mom calls us for breakfast."

Coraline stared at her sister. "You _never_ let me use Laptrap. I always have to use Mom's."

"Yeah, well, back in Michigan we had broadband all over the house. Here there's only one port, and it's in the kitchen. Ipso facto, it belongs to Mom. I, however, can get internet wherever I want, and how's she gonna know what we're doing? Several rules apply to Laptrap use, nonetheless."

"Great."

Katie grinned. "Hey, if you're using my laptop, you have to follow my rules. But they're practical. First, please don't use it without me knowing. You don't _have_ to get permission, but if you don't then I have the right to kick you off when I want to use it. Second, don't download anything, and I mean _anything_, without me approving. One of the reasons I still have this computer—that it hasn't crashed—is that I scan everything for viruses and several other less well known nasties before I download anything. There are a few websites that I trust, and I'll show them to you."

"But—" Coraline started, frowning.

"Note that this rule does not apply to saving pictures," Katie said quickly, forestalling Coraline's protest. "I'll come up with some other good rules tomorrow, but they won't apply until I tell you. Now go to sleep."

"Well, those two aren't too hard," Coraline reasoned, and yawned. "Thanks much. Goodnight, Katester. Although..." She looked over at her sister as she climbed into her sleeping bag. "Going to bed in your clothes probably isn't a good idea."

"Oh. Thanks. Good point. Goodnight, Coraline." Putting her laptop down, Katie got off the bed and walked over to her open suitcase. Kneeling down, she pulled out her own pajamas. Hers were a different style than Coraline's, and they were a teal and silver print on satin that looked vaguely Japanese. She also had dark blue boot-like slippers. Once she was done dressing, she jumped back into her bed and got inside her sleeping bag. Coraline was already half-asleep.

Katie put her laptop on her lap and opened it. Her hands fell naturally into position and she sighed with pleasure. She hadn't been able to use her computer since they left Michigan, and four days was a long time for her.

It only took Katie about thirty minutes to check her email and respond to her friends, blog a short entry, and post a picture to the current weekly contest of the photography community she was a member of. When she had completed her activities, she brought up a special window and entered a large string of code. The code initiated a program that would allow her or Coraline to log on simply by looking at the webcam and saying their name. Once that was completed, Katie got out of bed to put the laptop on the window seat, and plugged the charger into the outlet nearby.

Getting back in bed, Katie leaned over to the nightstand next to her and reached for her picture frame. It was shaped like a tiny folded black laptop. On the top in messy silver Sharpie it said "Katie-Kat Jones," and underneath that it read "Dork First Class." It had been a gift from her friends at her high school before she moved to Oregon. She flipped it open. The bottom half had a mini keyboard with keys that really typed, and the "screen" was filled with a picture of Katie's fellow dorks at Nelson High—Drew, the tall brunette; Bran, the black boy; Mairee, the girl with the stereotypical cheerleader look, tall with long blond hair.

Mairee was also pretty. Everyone had labeled her "pretty blond cheerleader" and "Homecoming Queen" as soon as they saw her. They didn't seem to notice that Mairee did nothing to support these labels. She didn't wear makeup, trendy and "look-at-me" clothing, or dye her hair. So the whole school had been stunned when they found out that the most gorgeous girl at Nelson was not at all interested in cheerleading or the football jocks, preferring instead to stay with her dork friends.

The picture had been taken in front of the high school sign. It was winter, and all three were wearing coats, hats, scarves, and mittens. They were smiling and throwing snow at each other. Looking at the picture, Katie sighed. "Don't forget about me, okay guys?" she said wistfully. Slowly she placed the picture frame back on her nightstand, open this time, and switched on her revolving night light. Then she lay down and turned to look at her doll. "Goodnight, little me," she whispered.

"G't li'l K'ie," came a sleepy voice from the other side of the room.

_So she wasn't quite asleep after all. _And Katie smiled.

* * *

This chapter is going to receive a lot of editing at some point.


	5. Going In Circles By Going Straight

This was the first Coraline update/posting/whatever of 2010.

* * *

Chapter 5: Going in Circles by Going Straight

Later that night, Katie was dreaming about macaroni and cheese. Bowls of it, still steaming from the heat of the water it was cooked in. So many different kinds. Katie sat down with a bowl of extra cheesy with pieces of hot dog and took a bite. "Mmmmm." She stuck her fork in a hot dog penny.

It squeaked at her.

"What the heck?" Frowning, Katie held her fork up and looked at the hot dog—and realized she was on her back, staring at her own hand, without a fork, and her ceiling behind it. It was dark.

"Nuts," Katie said sadly. She loved macaroni and cheese, and it wasn't a common food in the Jones household.

The hot dog penny squeaked again. (A/N: this sentence makes me laugh and laugh).)

"Seriously, why is that thing squeaking? Food doesn't squeak. Wait a sec, that was in my dream. So why do I still hear squeaking?" Katie leaned over the side of her bed and looked underneath it. Her hair, unbraided for the night, fell down around her like a midnight curtain. She peered a little harder…

"Whoa!" Katie slipped out of her bed, landing on the floor, but not very loudly or very hard. She shook her head to clear it, and a mouse with a very long tail held high above its head sailed by her. It didn't run or scurry like an ordinary mouse, and it wasn't black or gray. It was tan and white, and it hopped like a miniature kangaroo. It hopped toward the door and wiggled underneath it.

Katie blinked. "Wait, did that thing have _buttons_ for eyes? Maybe I'm dreaming. Yeah, that's it! It's night and things don't make sense. _Profound_ observation, Katie Marie Jones. Duh. Oh well, guess I'd better follow it." She stood up, throwing a glance at Coraline's bed. The younger girl was still sleeping soundly, a teddy bear tucked securely beside her.

"Good," Katie whispered. She grabbed her black blanket out of her sleeping bag and wrapped it around her shoulders. Then she hurried off after the mouse.

Leaving the room, she walked out into the hall and looked around. The circular window by her door showed an misty white spiral in a dark space instead of stars, but Katie didn't notice. At the sound of a squeak, she turned and saw the mouse by the top of the stairs. It looked at her and hopped off down the stairs.

"Oh no you don't," Katie muttered, and took off after it. She followed the mouse down and into the living room, her blanket fluttering rapidly behind her like a cape. When she entered the living room, the mouse was nowhere in sight. "Huh." Katie looked around carefully. Again, she didn't notice that these windows also showed misty spirals turning slowly instead of an ordinary nighttime sky.

_Squeak_. The mouse poked its head out from under the couch, made sure it had her attention, and scampered off toward the other side of the room.

"Heading for the little door, are you? Gotcha now." Katie went over to the door and plopped down. She opened it, expecting to find an odd mouse cowering against the bricks. When she didn't see it, she pulled the door open wider.

Instead of a frightened animal, she saw an otherworldly tunnel expanding away from her. Blue and purple and green and pink light played over its surface, which was rippled like folds of cloth, and there was a faint beautiful sound like the singing of stars. The mouse hopped down the tunnel and out a crack of light at the other end.

Katie gasped. "Whoa." She cautiously stretched one hand out. The tunnel's surface was soft and springy and yielded to her touch, but it was solid, like a rope net at a playground. Children never doubted that the net would hold them, even though it sank under their weight. Slowly Katie crawled inside, leaving her blanket on the floor like a patch of nothingness.

She moved through the tunnel slowly, marveling at the colors as they flickered softly around her and on her. When she looked down as she crawled, even the bottom of the tunnel was lit by vivid colors. "Wow," Katie whispered in awe. "This is so amazing."

When she reached the end of the tunnel, she discovered that the crack of light was made by a little door standing ajar. It was very similar to the door through which Katie had entered the tunnel. She pushed it open and crawled through.

"Huh?" Whatever she had or hadn't expected, it wasn't her own living room. There was a faint humming sound coming from somewhere

"Shoot," Katie said in disappointment as she stood up. "And here I was hoping it might actually lead somewhere interesting. So much for that idea. Although I seem to have gone in a circle by going straight. Hm. My physics teacher would be so confused. I bet Madeleine L'Engle wouldn't, though." She looked around and then up at the picture of the boy above the fireplace.

"That's weird." The boy was happily licking a triple-decker ice cream cone. "I seem to remember him being sad because he dropped it. Oh well."

Katie sniffed the air and her face lit up. "Mmm, something smells _good_." Noticing light coming from the doorway, she headed toward the kitchen. The humming resolved itself into a haunting melody sung on "la."

"Pretty song," Katie whispered as she came to the kitchen door and slid it fully open.

Mel Jones was standing by the stove, her back to Katie, wearing her customary high-necked white sweater and black pants. She was the one singing. Several pots were steaming on the stove. Katie could see a sliver of moon surrounded by darkness through the window, so she knew it wasn't morning.

"Mom?" Katie said in amazement. "What are you _doing_ here in the middle of the night?"

Mel turned around to face her older daughter. The first thing Katie noticed was that her mother was mixing something in a green bowl. _I don't think we have a bowl like that._ The second thing was that Mel's hair was straight at the ends, like Coraline's hair, not frizzy like usual. But the third thing pretty much banished that thought from her mind.

Mel did not have eyes. In their place shone black buttons.

Katie put a hand to her mouth. Mel smiled.

"You're just in time for supper, dear."


	6. Welcome Home, Katie

FYI: Katie's name is Katharine. Not Kathryn. You DO pronounce the 'a' in the middle, making it three syllables. Kath-a-rine. Remember that. It may be important later, it may not. I haven't decided yet.

* * *

Chapter 6: Welcome Home, Katie

Katie stared at the woman who looked like Mel. Her eyes narrowed and she walked forward. "_You're_ not my mother." She pointed at the woman and stopped. "_My_ mother doesn't have b-b-b—" She motioned to her eyes.

"B-b-b-buttons?" The woman smiled and set her bowl on the table, and tapped the buttons. "Do you like them? I'm your _Other_ Mother, silly." She moved back over to the stove and opened the door. There was a steaming, delicious-looking golden chicken inside. "Now go tell your Other Father that supper's ready."

Katie looked at her in confusion.

"Well go on," the Other Mother said, putting on an oven mitt shaped like a chicken's head. "He's in his study."

Still looking at her, Katie walked through the kitchen and off toward the room her dad worked in. As she walked down the hall she heard a piano playing. _We don't have a piano._

She pushed the door open. Charlie Jones was sitting at a red piano, playing random notes with one finger on each hand. Underneath the piano was a large circular rug. To the right of it was an off-kilter stack of eight boxes full of file folders. They towered over him, much like the boxes at home, except that these were all square and blue and opened outward instead of up, like shelves. There was an antique record player to Charlie's left, as well a tall yellow armchair. A purplish string bass leaned against the wall by the blue shelves. There were only a few lamps in the room, but they gave it a cheery warm light that was bright enough that Katie didn't have to strain her eyes.

Charlie himself was wearing a short orange bathrobe that ended halfway to his knees. Like Coraline's pajamas, the robe had irregular and randomly-spaced yellow polka dots. Unlike hers, none of its dots were red, and all of them were fairly large. The robe had wide bands of black satin trim at the collar, wrists, and hem. There was also a black satin belt around his waist. He wore black pajama pants as well, and light orange slippers with monkey heads. His hair was much longer than Katie thought it should be, poking out over his forehead, and the brown was streaked with blond.

"Hello?" Katie said.

Charlie spun on the stool to face her, crossing his left leg over his right, and propped his chin on one hand. He propped his arm on his left knee. "Hellooooo, Katie-girl."

Katie looked at him a little skeptically. He also had button eyes. That made him her _Other _Father. She could also now see that his robe was in fact a wrap over a white shirt.

"Wanna hear my new song?"

"_My_ father can't play piano," Katie said, crossing her arms.

The Other Father uncrossed his legs and put both his hands on his knees. "No need to." He leaned forward. The piano top opened and two white gloves leaped out at Katie over his shoulders.

Katie jumped back in fear before she realized that the gloves were attached to the piano by a series of many complicated joints and rods. The gloves pulled back again and fit snugly onto the Other Father's hands. "_This_ piano plays _me_." The gloves flexed his fingers and spun him around. "Whoa!"

The Other Father—or the hands—began to play a very upbeat tune that Katie liked very much. Then he began to sing as the rug began to spin like a very big lazy susan.

_**Makin' up a song about Katharine...  
**__**She is smart, she is cool, she was born to win.  
**__**She can handle a computer way better—**_

He spun on his stool and played backwards.

—_**than anyone who ever, ever, ever met  
**__**Katharine.**_

The Other Father pulled his hands out of the gloves and began spinning circles on his stool as he sang and the piano-hands played runs by themselves.

_**When she comes around explorin'  
**__**Mom and I will never, ever make it borin'  
**__**Our eyes will be on  
**__**Katharine!**_

The Other Father stopped spinning and slipped his hands back into the gloves and came down on the last chord. He let it ring for a few seconds, then spun back around to face her, still wearing the gloves.

"Whoa," Katie said, stunned.

"Did you like it, sweetheart?" he asked, looking a little worried.

"That was amazing, Dad! Err...Other Dad. Whatever. Oh!" Katie belatedly remembered why she'd come in here in the first place. "Well, um, she said to tell you the food's ready."

The Other Father grinned and rubbed his hands together. "Mmm, who's starving? Raise your hand." He put his right hand in the air, and the glove on his left hand pulled that hand up too. "Whoa!"

He and Katie both laughed, and then headed to the dining room.

Sitting at the short end of their long rectangular table, Katie watched with interest as the Other Mother carefully placed the roasted chicken in front of her daughter. Then she sat down in the middle of the long side to Katie's right. The Other Father sat across from his wife. He cleared his throat, and all three—Katie and the two Others—folded their hands and bowed their heads.

"We give our thanks and ask to bless..." the Other Father intoned.

Katie winced. _Now he's going to come up with some awful rhyme, as usual,_ she thought to herself.

"...our mother's golden—chicken breast!" He gestured grandly to the Other Mother.

_That was actually **good**_, Katie thought with surprise.

The Other Mother flapped her hand at him with a smile as he laughed. She then picked up a bell that stood above and to the left of her plate and rang it. All three put their napkins on their laps. The two lazy susans on the table began to turn slowly and the Other Father served himself a heaping helping of peas.

Katie reached out and took a drumstick from the golden-brown chicken. Having grown up in the "Charlie Jones, Chef Extraordinaire" household, she was instinctively wary of anything put in front of her and called _food_. First she examined the drumstick closely. Then she carefully sniffed it. Finally she took a bite.

"Mmm...this chicken is good!" Katie exclaimed with happy surprise.

The Other Mother folded her hands and rested her elbows on the table. "Hungry, aren't you?" she asked kindly.

Katie served herself a roll and the lazy susan turned, offering her the handle of a spoon. She took it and plopped a mound of mashed potatoes on her plate. "Do we have any gravy?" she asked, making sure to swallow before she spoke.

"Well, here comes the gravy train!" the Other Mother said laughingly. She pulled an imaginary train whistle. "Choo-oo choo!"

A small blue old-fashioned train engine emerged from the large pineapple-shaped decoration in the middle of the table. It pulled a flatbed car with a gravy boat on top. Snorting steam, it chugged along the figure eight track, around both lazy susans and stopped in front of Katie. She watched with interest as the gravy boat rose and rotated on a spring and poured gravy on her mashed potatoes.

"Huh."

"Another roll?" the Other Mother asked. "Sweet peas? Corn on the cob?" The lazy susan in front of Katie rotated so that each successive dish was in front of her. She looked them and thought a moment.

"I'm _real_ thirsty."

"Of course. Any requests?" said the Other Mother, smiling and gesturing upward at the chandelier. It smoothly lowered, revealing that instead of candles or lights, it had small old-fashioned drink dispensers on each branch.

"Freckled lemonade?" Katie asked hopefully as the chandelier came to rest. She looked at it. "Awesome." The container on the arm right in front of her was filled with her favorite drink. She held up her glass and pulled the stopper. Lemonade tinged with pink poured into her glass. When it was full, Katie pushed the stopper back and the chandelier rose again.

While Katie was drinking her lemonade, the Other Mother took her plate and placed a tall circular cake in front of her. Pink frosting swirled down the sides. When Katie put her glass down and looked at the cake, ten small yellow buds appeared in a circle. They quickly opened flat into flowers and a lit candle sprang up in the center of each flower. Red piped frosting wrote itself in cursive across the cake, forming the words "Welcome home!"

Katie looked over at the Other Mother quizzically. "Home?"

The Other Father walked over behind his wife, putting one hand on the back of her chair and taking her hand, and smiled. Katie liked his smile.

"We've been waiting for you and Coraline, Katie," the Other Mother said.

"For us?" Katie asked disbelievingly, forgetting that her sister wasn't there.

"Yep," said the Other Father. "Wasn't the same here without you guys."

Katie crossed her arms. "I didn't know I _had_ another mother."

"Of course you do," the Other Mother said. "Everyone does." The Other Father nodded in agreement.

"Really?" Katie asked skeptically.

"Uh-huh." The Other Mother let go of the Other Father's hand. "And as soon as you're through eating, I thought we'd play a game!" Her button eyes flashed excitedly and she quietly drummed the fingers of one hand on the table.

Katie looked at the fingers, then up at her Other parents. "You mean like hide-and-seek?"

"Perfect!" the Other Mother exclaimed, putting her hands together happily. "Hide-and-seek—in the _rain_."

"What rain?" Katie asked in confusion. Then she jumped as lightning flared, thunder boomed, and rain began to fall. "Huh," she said, looking out the window. Then her eyes narrowed and she looked back. "What about the mud?"

"We _love_ mud here!" the Other Father proclaimed, making a ta-da motion with both hands. The Other Mother got up and started walking over.

"Mud facials, mud baths, mud pies..." she listed. "It's great for poison oak. Why don't you bring your sister next time?"

"But Coraline's right—" Katie started, and then remembered with a jerk that Coraline in fact was not there. "Yeah, I guess I could try," she said doubtfully. "I don't know if she'll believe me. I'll probably have to drag her out of bed." She thought of something and added carefully, "You know, I'd love to stay and play, but I think I'd better be getting home to my other mother."

"But _I'm_ your other mother," the Other Mother said with a big smile, leaning forward slightly and gesturing to herself.

_Oookay_, Katie thought. _That wasn't at all creepy._ "I—I mean my _other_, other mother. Mom number one?" she said, holding up one finger. Backing up slightly, she bumped into the Other Father and turned. He smiled and waved. Katie didn't notice the Other Mother frown slightly when she wasn't looking. When she looked back, however, the woman was smiling.

"I think I should get to bed."

"Of course, sweetheart," said the Other Mother. "We've already made your bed."

"But Coraline's up there!" Katie protested. "Won't we wake—oh wait. I went through the door. She didn't. Right."

"Come along, sleepyhead," the Other Father said, giving her a gentle push as the three began heading toward the stairs. As they left the room, he flipped the lights off.

The Other Father opened the door to the girls' bedroom and pushed the switch on. The room lit up. Katie took a few steps in and gasped. "Wow...!"

The room was distinctly split in two halves—the far side of the room was still just-moved-in bare, the near side was decorated for Katie. Her half had light blue walls with a darker blue strip along the top. The window seat had thick blue cushions and all the windows had elegant sheer white curtains. The fireplace crackled cheerfully and several of Katie's music awards were arranged neatly on her half of the mantel. In between the decorated half of the room and the bare half was a two-drawer white dresser with a large tilt mirror on top.

Katie's bed had four posts, just like normal. But instead of a sleeping bag and plain pillow, it had black sheets, an aquamarine comforter, and two large, fluffy white pillows. Over the bed there was a black canopy with silver stars, which trailed down into sheer curtains that were tied back to the bed posts. The bed skirt was also black with silver stars. On one side of the bed was a nightstand with Katie's revolving night light and picture frame on it. On the other was a tall bookcase with some of her favorite books. Next to the bookcase was a desk, and the chair faced toward the bed.

"Wow," Katie repeated. It was all she could think of to say. This was her dream room. Then...

"Heya, Katie-Kat," said Mairee Rieyer's voice.

"How's it, ya old dorkmeister?" said Bran Barrett's voice.

Katie spun around toward her nightstand, her face lighting up.

"Where're your laptop and cl'r'net?" Drew Pfiefenn asked as he, Bran, and Mairee all waved at Katie from the laptop picture frame. None of them had button eyes. (a/n: clarinet)

"Oh my gosh!" Katie scrambled across her bed and snatched the picture frame off the nightstand. "Holy schneikies, how are all me fellow dorkulas?"

"Oh, we're as well as can be expected," Mairee giggled, "without our Grand Old Dork of Dorks."

"I really miss all y'all. Please tell me you're coming out here for spring break? I can't wait," Katie said excitedly, bouncing up and down.

"Oh, we already came, Katie," Bran said, throwing two handfuls of snow at Mairee.

"I researched the Oregon Trail on the way," Mairee added before she shoved a snowball down Bran's shirt.

"You dork!" Drew dumped snow on her head, and she pushed him into a snowbank.

Katie laughed. Then she yawned and crawled under the comforter, holding the picture close. She closed her eyes as the Other Mother sat down in the chair. The Other Father turned off the light and came to stand by the bed.

"See you soon," they said together, watching as Katie fell asleep.


	7. Secret!

Chapter 7: Secret!

"Katie, Katie, upsa-daisy!"

"Uhhhhh..." Katie groaned and rolled over. "Five more minutes."

"Nope, now! Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey! The sun doth shine, it's wake-up time! Hear the trumpet, have a crumpet! I've got a bunch more of Dad's horrific rhymes if you need them."

_That _woke Katie up. "No, please! Anything but that." Coraline was bouncing up and down on the older girl's bed. "Quit it, Corrie, I'm awake," Katie said tiredly. Then she remembered. "Huh? You're not supposed to be here."

"Course I am, silly. This is my house too, isn't it?"

"What?" Katie looked around. There was an old iron radiator in the fireplace, nothing on the mantel, no curtains on the windows, and boring old wallpaper. Her bed was an ordinary four-poster and she was lying in a sleeping bag. "I don't get it," Katie said, confused.

"Don't get what?" Coraline asked with interest, pulling on a pair of jeans. She also put on her other orange-striped shirt. She'd gotten two of the exact same shirt that Christmas.

"Tell you at breakfast," Katie said, as she put on a dark green hooded cardigan over a plain maroon shirt and black sweatpants. "Brush your hair and make your bed," she added as Coraline headed for the door.

"_Ka_tie!" Coraline groaned.

"Hey, I brush my hair, and it's longer than yours," Katie pointed out. "And you _know_ how much Mom hates messy hair and unmade beds."

"How am I supposed to make a sleeping bag?" Coraline wanted to know, crossing her arms.

"Zip it up and flatten it out and straighten the pillow," Katie said somewhat absently as she ran a brush through her hair. "Really, it's not that hard."

"Fine!" Coraline exclaimed, going over to her bed and roughly pulling her sleeping bag into a semblance of order. "Are you happy now?"

Katie sighed as she straightened her own bag. "It'll do. Now get over here and I'll brush your hair. Special offer."

"Grrr." Coraline walked over to her sister.

Katie smiled. "It doesn't take that long. See? Already done."

"Okay, breakfast time."

"Sure, I just gotta check one thing first."

"What's that?"

"Mmm." Katie headed out and Coraline followed her. They walked down the stairs and into—

"The living room?" Coraline asked, scratching her poison oak absent-mindedly. Katie realized she'd been scratching all of yesterday.

"Yeah," Katie said, crouching down in front of the little door and pulling it open with an excited look. Her face fell. "Aww, still bricks," she said disappointedly.

"What did you expect?" Coraline asked, an amused look on her face.

Katie didn't answer. She put one hand out to touch the bricks as a teakettle whistled from the kitchen.

"Huh."

"It was incredibly real, Mom," Katie said as Mel removed the screeching kettle from the stove. "Only you weren't really you, you were my _other_ mother."

Mel poured water into two mugs and added instant coffee. "Buttons for eyes, huh?"

Katie nodded. She'd been telling her story while Coraline ate her cereal. Katie hadn't eaten much of anything, although she had drunk some of her orange juice.

Mel sighed. "Katie, you only dreamed you ate all that chicken. Take your multivitamin at least." She took one mug and the jar of coffee and walked over toward the refrigerator.

"Sounds pretty awesome, Katester," Coraline commented, mouth full of cereal.

"It was."

Charlie walked over to the table, a sheaf of papers under his right arm. He had a bowl of cereal in his right hand and was quickly spooning it into his mouth. He reached out to put the cereal bowl down and pick up his coffee. The papers fell on the floor.

"You were in the dream too, Dad," Katie said excitedly. "You had wild-looking pajamas and orange monkey slippers."

Charlie laughed as he picked up the papers with one hand and his coffee with the other. "Orange? _My_ monkey slippers are blue." He leaned back and held one long leg up at waist level, revealing slippers that looked a lot like fuzzy blue flip-flops, and wiggled his foot.

"You don't even have _monkey_ slippers, Dad," Coraline commented dryly. "No monkeys anywhere."

"Yes, well, I _used _to. By the way, Katie—can you get _me_ some of that magic mud you were talking about? Cause I have a terrible case of writer's rash." He put one hand behind him. "On my—"

"A_hem_." Someone cleared her throat very loudly. Charlie looked around. Mel was glaring at him. He brought his hand back to his side and turned to face her.

"If the _real_ Charlie Jones wants his pages edited," Mel said icily, "he'd better wrap them up asap."

Charlie walked off to his study. Mel put a jug of milk back in the fridge and shoved the door. It shut with a metallic clang, the latch clicking into place. "Katie, Coraline."

The two girls looked up as Mel walked over to pick up her coffee and newspaper. Katie was playing with her spoon. She was holding it upright with the tip of the spoon's bowl on the table and twisting it back and forth.

"Why don't you girls go visit downstairs?"

Both girls gasped. Katie dropped her spoon.

"I bet those 'actresses' would _love_ to hear Katie's dream," Mel continued unperturbedly as she headed toward the hallway.

Katie flipped her spoon over so that the end was on the table, and continued twisting it, her head propped up sullenly on one arm. She frowned. The spoon reflected a little spot of light onto the walls.

"Miss Spink and Forcible?" Coraline said in disbelief. "But even _you_ said both of them are dingbats!" With the last word she hit her head with the heel of her hand to indicate craziness.

Katie slapped her spoon down with the palm of her hand. It wasn't very loud. "Yeah," she agreed.

Mel turned around in the doorway. "Mmm-hm." She left.

Coraline and Katie looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

"Goody, off to the crazy ladies," Katie said sarcastically as the two girls walked out the door clad in their raincoats and boots.

"Talk about it," Coraline grumbled. Then her foot bumped something. "What?" She stopped and looked down at the stack of bulky packages she'd knocked over. "Oops."

"Hey, maybe our friends sent us something!" Katie exclaimed excitedly. Sticking her pruning shears firmly into the wood porch, she hurriedly scooped up the packages and then sighed.

"Bo-bin-sky," she read, carefully sounding out the name. "Bobinsky, Bobinsky, Bobinsky...do you smell something off?"

Coraline sniffed. "Definitely. Where's it coming from?"

"Hmm..." Katie put her nose near the top package and cautiously sniffed. "Ugh!" She coughed. "I don't what's in these things, but it's pretty ripe. I wouldn't," she added as Coraline leaned in to sniff.

"Phew-ee!" Coraline yelped, waving her hands frantically in front of her nose.

"Like I said," Katie said, smiling. Then she noticed something. "Hey, look." Coraline turned around. Behind them there was a sign in the shape of an arrow, pointing up a rusty set of stairs. It read: "BOBINSKY THERE". They carefully walked up, each balancing several packages.

When they reached the top, Katie carefully knocked on the door. It was an uncommonly tall door, and somewhat narrow. There was a bell with a string hanging next to it, but neither girl noticed. They were preoccupied with keeping the packages as far from their noses as possible.

"Hello?" Katie called after knocking. No answer.

"I think our mail got mixed up!" Coraline added. Still no answer.

"Should we leave it outside, or—oh!" Katie, who had been pressing her ear to the door listening for any response, abruptly discovered that the door was not completely latched. She lost her balance, and the packages she'd been carrying flew up in the air. She recovered just in time to catch them.

"Well, it's open, might as well have a look," Coraline pointed out. The two girls peered inside the apartment.

It was very dim inside. The only light came from a medium size pointed lamp on a small round table. The tablecloth came down almost to the floor, and was balanced on top by a piece of sheer fabric that had been placed over the lamp. The effect was rather like a miniature circus tent. On both sides of the room were clotheslines with stuff drying on them. There were a lot of very long thin socks.

Several barrels were scattered over the room, as well as a ladder, stool, and a few chairs. On a shelf towards the back Katie and Coraline could see several pictures and a few things that looked something like nesting dolls. As their eyes moved to the left, they saw an old-fashioned iron cartwheel leaning against a stack of boxes. On top of the boxes sat a chicken, which bawked at the girls and resumed pecking at its food tray. Next to the boxes was the brick chimney, and in front of that was an outdated stove. It was an old-fashioned stove, the kind with a door on the front that is opened to put fuel inside. On the stove was a black pot that was boiling over and making a hissing sound.

"Hmm," said Coraline as she and Katie peered closer. They were concentrating so hard on seeing through the dimness that they didn't notice—

"**_Secret!_**"

Both girls screamed as they whipped around. Something like a long blue stick reached past them and jerked the door closed. They bent forward to avoid being knocked over. The stick shook a dark red blob at them.

"Famous jumping mouse seercus not ready!" The voice had a Russian accent.

The girls looked up. The blue stick became one arm of a man with light blue skin. _Now_ that's _weird_, Katie thought to herself.

"Little girls," the man added, taking a bite of the dark red blob. Now they could see that he was very tall. He was also swinging upside-down from the pole that stuck out from the roof. His arms and legs were very thin, but his torso was very round. His face was very long, and his chin was very sharp. His shoulders were also round. He was wearing a yellow men's undershirt, faded and stained, and a pair of short blue gym shorts with a double white stripe on each side. Although the shorts fit well, the undershirt was painfully stretched around him and much too short.

He was also wearing black leather boots. No doubt they had originally been sold as knee-length, but Katie was the only one of the three who could have worn them like that. On Coraline they would have been waist-length, and on the blue Russian man they were only shin-length. He had no hair, thick black eyebrows, and a long mustache that could only be described as a bundle of very bent black wires. He also wore a medal of some sort pinned on his shirt. On his wrists he wore wrist supports and one knee was wrapped.

"Circus?" said Katie skeptically as she and Coraline drew back slightly. "Oh!" She nudged her sister.

"Uh, we brought these for you?" Coraline said nervously. Both girls held out the packages they carried.

The man's face lit up. He dropped the dark red blob he'd been eating—a beet—and swung forward to snatch the packages from the girls. Coraline grimaced as he clutched the packages tightly and sniffed them earnestly. He sighed with pleasure.

"Mmm, novye syra."

Neither Katie nor Coraline had ever studied Russian. "Huh?" said Katie.

"New cheese samples?" the man translated. Letting the packages fall to the deck, he braced himself on the railing and vaulted over the girls heads with a grunt. They scurried forward to avoid being hit. The man straightened his back. Clasping his hands, he stretched his arms out in front of him, cracking his knuckles. He then lifted one leg straight over his head, leaned forward, picked up a package, and held in Katie's face. She wrinkled her nose and tried not to breathe.

"Very clever, using dis mix-up to sneak my home and peek at myshkas!" he said angrily.

"Myshkas?" Coraline asked.

"De mice!" the man exclaimed as he straightened up, dropped the package, and jerked one thumb over his shoulder towards the apartment. He vaulted back over to the railing, landing on his hands with his legs in a split, and Katie and Coraline jumped back toward the door.

"Oh," Katie said. "Sorry." She decided that some peacemaking was in order. "I'm Katie Jones..." she offered hopefully.

"And I'm Coraline Jones."

"And I—" the man moved so he was parallel to the railing, gripping it with both hands, his legs in an elegant shape above his head "—am de Amazing Bobinsky!" He balanced on the rail with one hand, his body held out straight. He grinned hugely. His wrist only trembled a little.

Katie and Coraline stared at him. He didn't seem to notice.

"But you—call me Mr. B." Standing on the railing, he made a B-shape with his body. Both knees were bent, one to the front and one to the side. He had one hand on his hip and the other reached behind his back to grab the bent wrist. He tilted his head to one side. The imitation of a capital B was very accurate, if a bit pointy.

"Because 'Amazing,' I already know—" He moved so that he was holding himself up by both arms in front of him with his legs in a split. "—that I am." He crossed his legs behind him and pushed off the railing with a grunt, spreading his arms out wide and looking very much like a skydiver as he fell out of sight.

"What the—" Coraline gasped as she and Katie rushed to the railing. When they looked over, all they could see was the path below. There was no sign of Mr. B.

"Hah!" The sisters spun around to find that the missing man had sprung back onto the deck.

"You see, Katya and Caroline, de problem eez: my new songs go 'OOM-pah, OOM-pah.' " Mr. Bobinski hit his chest with each 'pah,' then hopped across the deck like a mouse and imitated playing a flute. "But de jumping mice play only 'tootle-toot,' like that. It eez nice, but..." He shrugged. "Not so much _amazing_."

Katie and Coraline looked at each other and rolled their eyes.

"So now I svitch to stronger cheese!" He bent down, gathered the packages, and held them up to show the girls. They flinched away from the smell. "And soon...vatch out!" He saluted and turned to leave, but then turned back to the girls. "Here, have beets." He pulled a beet out of his back pocket and handed it to Coraline, then pulled out another and handed it to Katie. "Make you _strong_."

The girls looked up at him quizzically. He kicked the door open with one long leg and smiled. "Do svidaniya, Caroline and Katya." He sprang backward through the door and it shut with a clang of the bell. The girls looked at the closed door.

"_Cor_aline."

"_Katie_."

They both tossed their beets over the railing in annoyance and walked down the steps in silence. Once they were back on the porch, Katie pulled her shears out of the wood with a satisfying _thunk-swish_. She and Coraline headed toward the family car, a grey VW Beetle. Two days ago, when they moved in, the girls had left one suitcase on top of the car. It was still firmly tied to the roof, and the rain would have hardened the knots so that they couldn't be undone—that was why Katie had brought her shears.

"Oompah, oompah," Katie muttered as the girls walked along the path by the side of the house, and toward the car.

"Tootle-toot, tootle-toot," Coraline added absently.

"Hey! Katya! Caroline!"

Katie and Coraline looked up. They were right under Mr. B's deck, and he was standing by the railing and waving his arms frantically.

"Podozhdi! _Vaaaaaait_!" He jumped over the railing and came hurtling down toward them.

Katie dropped her shears. "No!" both girls yelped at the same time as they covered their heads and crouched down.

Fortunately, Mr. B's legs were long enough that he could simply spread them apart and land _over_ the girls' heads. He lifted one leg and they scurried out from below him. He crouched very low, so that his head was level with Katie's, and leaned in.

"Katya, de mice asked me to give you message."

Katie flinched away a little. His breath smelled like beets. She hated beets. "The...jumping mice?" she asked warily.

"Dey are saying—" Mr. B looked around, making sure no one was watching, and put a hand to the side of his mouth like he was telling a secret "—do not go through leetle door."

Katie's eyes widened and her mouth fell open in surprise.

"Do you know such a ting?" he asked, looking very confused.

Coraline looked back and forth between the two, trying to figure out what was happening.

"The one behind the wallpaper?" Katie asked slowly. "But...it's all bricked up."

Mr. B straightened and began to walk toward the front of the house. "Bah. So sorry, eez nothing." He turned to face them, squatting down in preparation for a jump. "Sometimes the mice are leetle...how to say...mixed-up, hmm?" He pointed one finger of each hand at his hand and twirled them around, then leaped into the air and over the railing. The girls watched as he headed up the stairs towards his apartment.

"Dey even get your names wrong, you know? Dey call you 'Katie' and 'Coraline' instead of 'Katya' and 'Caroline.'" He gestured wildly. "Not 'Katya' and 'Caroline' at all! Maybe I work dem too hard."

"Never been called _that_ before," Katie commented as Coraline frowned. "He's kinda strange. Anyway," the older girl added, "let's get the hats." They finished walking to the car, and Katie clipped the rope. She reached up and pulled down the smallish suitcase. It was bright pink, and large blue five-petaled flowers with yellow centers were painted on it, as well as a blue trim. It had been one of their shared birthday presents several years earlier, but Coraline had added the childish flowers, insisting that it was "little-pinky-princess. Yucky."

Katie set the suitcase on the ground and flipped the clasps open. "I _told_ you mine was on top," she said smugly as she removed a teal crocheted beret from the case and settled it on her head. It looked rather pretty with her black hair, which was down for the day.

Coraline rolled her eyes. "Like it matters." She crouched down and pulled out a black Japanese schoolboy's cap. It had a brim and a gold emblem on the front. She put it on. When she wore the cap she looked quite adventurous.

Coraline began to walk off toward the downstairs apartment.

"Uh uh, Corrie," Katie said.

"What?" Coraline asked, turning around.

Katie looked pointedly at the suitcase.

"What?"

"We need to take that inside so it doesn't get any dirtier. And it needs to dry out. We're lucky it held up against the rain."

"Why can't we do that afterwards?"

"What if it rains again? Do you really want your favorite suitcase getting wrecked?" Katie said.

Coraline sighed and walked back over. She closed and picked up the suitcase, and the sisters headed toward the porch.

After they had deposited the suitcase just inside the house, they walked back out and Katie stumbled.

"You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. But..." Katie bent down and picked up the thing she'd tripped on. It was a plain box, long and narrow. In messy printing it was labeled simply "Coraline," no other words. Katie showed it to Coraline, and said what both of them were thinking.

"What on earth is this?"

* * *

All the Russian is correctly transliterated, at least as best I could with crappy Google Translate.

Chapter 8 is _much_ shorter. It's also the first chapter that has absolutely no basis in the movie, so please bear with me if the writing sounds different. And now...

**SPECIAL TREAT!**: some of Charlie's "horrific rhymes" that Coraline was talking about at the beginning of the chapter:

Open the curtains, pull on your jerkin!  
If you hit that clock it'll give you a shock!  
Out of bed, go brush your head!  
Open your eyes or you'll get a surprise!  
Pull back the covers or you won't get your druthers! (contributed by my sister; druthers means choices or preferences)


	8. Another Doll?

Told you it was short. Not happy with it at all. Don't ask how an 11-year-old and a 15-year-old know syllogism, even if their birthdays _are_ really soon.

* * *

Chapter 8: Another Doll?

"How am I supposed to know?" Coraline said, shrugging.

"Well, it's addressed to you," Katie said, handing the box to her sister. "Why don't you open it?"

"Hmm..." Coraline sat down, legs crossed, and put the box on her lap. Katie sat down next to her.

Coraline carefully removed the top of the box. Inside was something wrapped in tissue paper. She took the whole package out and started to take off the paper.

"Sixteen...seventeen...eighteen...nineteen..." Katie counted in a sing-song voice.

"Blast it all, how many layers of this stuff _is_ there?" Coraline exclaimed. Her face was red with anger. "That's it, I'm ripping it!"

"But Corrie, what would Mom think?" Katie giggled. Mel Jones was a fanatic about reusing wrapping paper and other like things.

"I don't care!"

_Rrrrrrrrip._

"What the..." Coraline stuffed the paper back in the box and held up the thing she'd unwrapped.

It was a soft, floppy, home-made looking doll. It wore a yellow raincoat and boots, striped leggings, and a pink dress. Its hair was made of yarn, several black strands mixed in with the blue strands, and there was a tiny pink barrette shaped something like a dragonfly on one side. Two black buttons stood in for eyes. It was, in fact, somewhat similar to the doll Wybie had left for Katie.

"Great, another one," Coraline grumbled. "That annoying stalker boy."

Katie grimaced. "At least he didn't label it 'Corsey'. He labeled mine 'Katesey.'"

"Eew!"

"That was my reaction too. Be glad for small things."

Coraline looked at the doll half-disgustedly, half-curiously. "I'm too old for dolls."

"Nonsense," Katie chided, shaking her finger at the younger girl. "Major premise: I am older than you. Minor premise: I am not too old for dolls. Conclusion: You cannot possibly be too old for dolls."

"Major premise: I don't think the same way as my sister. Minor premise: My sister is crazy. Conclusion: I have good reason to believe that I am too old for dolls," Coraline retorted, trying to keep a straight face.

"Major premise: You are crazy. Minor premise: I am crazy. Conclusion: neither of us really has any idea what we're talking about," Katie replied, and both girls broke down laughing.

"We really are crazy, aren't we?" Coraline gasped, wiping her eyes.

"Noooooo," Katie drawled. "We just talk about dolls using syllogism. Nope, not crazy at all."

Coraline flapped a hand at Katie.

"Girls?" Mel's voice floated through the door. "Is that you?"

"I think we got sidetracked. We better go," Coraline whispered as the two girls got to their feet.

Katie groaned. "Ack, my legs. They fell asleep." She snagged the box the doll had come in and quietly put it inside, on top of the suitcase.

"That's what you get for sitting cross-legged. What should I do with this doll?"

Katie shrugged. "Well, you can't very well go put it in your room, because Mom will invariably inquire what the ladies said and all that. Why don't you just put it in your raincoat pocket for now?"

Coraline tucked the doll into the pocket like Katie had suggested, making sure that it faced out and that the arms were outside the pocket.

"And you're _not_ too old for dolls."

"Am too." They walked down the porch stairs and turned right toward the lower level apartment entrance.

"Are not."

"Am too."

"Are not."

"Am too."

"Are not!"

"_Fine!_ Am not! At least for the next ten minutes."

* * *

See? Did that make any sense at all? I thought not. Chapter 9 will be called No Whistling in the House. I have had all my chapter titles planned out for a few weeks, as well as the titles for all of the _Severed Souls_ books that I haven't started yet.


	9. No Whistling In the House

Hi! I am back. And there will be more notes at the end of the chapter. Although if you haven't read Ch 8 for a while you may wish to review it again.

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Chapter 9: No Whistling In the House

"Well, at least they had the insight to get an electric chair," Katie commented as she and Coraline walked down the stairs to the old ladies' apartment. A fine white mist was beginning to creep along the ground and down the stairwell.

"A _what_?" Coraline yelped as she stopped short. Since she was in front, Katie bumped into her.

The older girl belatedly realized what she'd said and how it had sounded. "Err, you know, one of those chairs that you sit on and push buttons and it goes up and down a slanted railing? For old people who can't climb stairs anymore?"

"Oh, one of those," Coraline said. "You had me scared for a minute. Hmm, no doorbell." They had reached the bottom and stood in front of the door. It was set into a wall made of very rough-hewn grey stones, with an arched doorway. The door itself was not arched, but a normal rectangle, brown with a window in the top half. Above the door, in the space between the lintel and the stone arch, was a light like an old-fashioned lantern.

The curtains on the inside of the window were pulled back and the girls peered inside. The light was too dim to see much of anything. Katie looked down.

"Hey, look, the doormat says 'No whistling in the house.' Why would that be?"

Coraline shrugged. "Beats me." She lifted the knocker and dropped it in surprise. "Drama masks!" Indeed, the knocker was attached to the door through the mouths of two masks, one happy and one sad.

Katie rolled her eyes. "Corrie, they're _actresses_. Duh." She grabbed the knocker and knocked several more times. They waited. Coraline peered intently through the window.

_**RARF!!!**_

Coraline yelped and staggered backwards. Katie caught her. Several scotty dogs had suddenly jumped up towards the window. They jumped and fell back down and jumped back up and fell back down, barking repeatedly.

Someone with pink hair opened the door. Five scotties tumbled out and encircled the girls, leaping up and putting their paws against them. Katie and Coraline stood back to back, trying to keep away from the dogs.

"Oh, cease your infernal yapping!" The voice was high-pitched and full of vibration; perhaps that was why, surprisingly, the dogs obeyed. They yipped and instantly stopped jumping and began to circle the girls, sniffing them.

"Ah, how nice to see you, Caroline and Cathy. Would you like to come in? We're playing cards." The voice belonged to a short, fat woman—shorter even than Coraline. Her face was very wide and soft, and her cheeks jiggled when she spoke. She had at least a double chin. The light green bathrobe she wore was a bit long for her, and it had green tulle ruffles around the front edges, the full-length sleeves, and the bottom. Her hair was pink and shoulder-length, or it would have been if it hadn't been severely curled at the bottom into a single rolled curl. She wore heavy blue eye shadow. She also used a walker with a small basket on the front. In the basket was a ball of white yarn with a pair of knitting needles stuck in it.

The pink-haired woman walked backwards into the foyer of the apartment. Next the dogs went in, followed by Coraline, then Katie. Katie shut the door as Coraline took off her hat.

"Still Coraline and Katie, Miss Spink," Coraline said, rolling her eyes. She took off her hat, carefully removed her coat, making sure the doll didn't fall out, and put it over her arm. Katie did the same, but she didn't bother taking her beret off. It worked just as well inside as outside.

The foyer was curtained with maroon velvet on the left and had a single light bulb on the ceiling. "Miriam!" Miss Spink trilled through the curtain, putting one hand to her mouth. "Put the kettle on!" She put one hand on her hip and winked at the girls. Then she moved off through the curtain.

On the wall behind the place where she had stood was a poster. It showed two young women, one shorter with dark pink hair that was pulled up behind her head, one much taller with wavy white hair that fell down past her hips. Both women had impossibly thin waists, but the shorter one had huge hips and the taller one was, shall we say, rather top-heavy in the region of the upper torso. Both had their hands on their hips and looked out at the viewer, and the shorter one was winking. Their outfits were...somewhat risqué. The poster was labeled "Spink!" and "Forcible!"

Coraline looked at the poster in confusion.

_O-ho_, thought Katie, _they're **that** kind of actress._

They followed Miss Spink through the curtain and into a different type of apartment than anything they'd ever seen. There were several square wooden pillars holding the roof up, all wrapped with blue Christmas lights. Myriads of different chairs were scattered haphazardly around the main room. The dogs had run ahead of the three and all piled onto a pink sofa at the far end of the room. There was an oblong coffee table in front of the sofa. In the wall above the sofa was a miniature stage, complete with tied-back curtains and lights in front—but on this stage, the furnace was the star.

As Miss Spink, Katie, and Coraline made their way across the room, Miss Forcible came out of the kitchen. Her chin-length white hair curled gently inward at the bottom, and she wore a small red cap with a small pink rose and a small white feather. She wore a pink robe, much too long for her, even though she was tall. The robe had wide blue trim on the edges, and on the sleeves, which flared out at the elbow. For her height, she had very small feet. Like her fellow "actress," except for height, she had grown larger with age—in _all_ respects.

"Eew," Katie whispered under her breath.

"April, I think—I think you're being followed!" Miss Forcible pulled a pair of glasses off her neckline where they'd been clipped and unfolded them, showing that they were on a long stick; they were intended to be held in front of the eyes instead of worn behind the ears.

"It's the new neighbors, Miriam—Cathy and Caroline," Miss Spink replied. Katie and Coraline waved. As they walked along, Katie noticed two more posters, these ones framed. One showed the two women in somewhat Roman costume, with the title "Julius Sees-Her." The other showed them in less than respectable outfits. A small king with huge eyes sat on a throne. This poster was titled "King Leer."

_Double eew_, Katie added mentally.

"They'll be having the oolong tea," Miss Spink continued.

"No, no, no, no," Miss Forcible said. "I'm _sure_ they'd prefer jasmine." She was holding a jar marked "jasmine" as she spoke.

Miss Spink stopped and glared at Miss Forcible. "No, oolong."

"Ah, jasmine it is, then!" Miss Forcible exclaimed, holding up the jar and shuffling off.

Miss Spink groaned and put one hand to her head. Coraline and Katie looked at each other and shrugged.

When they finally got to the sofa, the dogs were still sitting on it. "Come on, boys!" Miss Spink said sternly. The dogs removed themselves from the sofa, leaving five piles of cards behind. Coraline and Katie put their raincoats on the sofa and edged behind the table to sit down. Then they accidentally looked up and gasped.

On each side of the stage, there was a display of scotty dogs. They all wore gold-trimmed white robes, gold wings, gold halos, and some had little harps. Their eyes were sewn shut, and their fur looked uncomfortably natural.

"Are those dogs...real?" Katie asked cautiously.

"Our sweet departed angels," Miss Spink said as she made her way to a chair and sat down. "Couldn't bear to part with them, so we had them stuffed."

Both girls recoiled, but Miss Spink didn't notice. "Now, there's Hamish the third, the fourth..."

Miss Forcible came up carrying a tray with two cups of tea, a teapot, and a glass bowl full of candy.

"...the eighth, the ninth, Malcolm the sixth..."

"Oh, go on, have one." Miss Forcible set down the tray in front of the girls. As they looked at the candy curiously, she added, "It's hand-pulled taffy from Brighton."

"...the second, the fourth, Angus the second..."

"Best in the world." Miss Forcible struck a modeling pose and walked off.

"...the fifth, the seventh, Duncan the eighth..."

Katie went to take a piece, but when she lifted one the whole bowl lifted too. She shook her hand, hoping that the candy would come off. It didn't.

"...the third, the ninth, yes..."

"Here, Katie, I'll hold the bowl and you grab the candy and we'll push off each other," Coraline suggested, taking the bowl.

"...the fourth, I'm right...and Jock Jr., Jock Sr...."

They pulled as hard as they could, but unfortunately their hands slipped and the whole thing flew up in the air. The candy stuck to a large pipe above the girls' heads, effectively holding the bowl up in the air as well.

"...Jock the third, the fourth...oh! And that's Jock's second cousin thrice removed."

The girls sat up.

"I'll read them, if you like," Miss Spink said, leaning in and startling them.

"Read what?" asked Coraline.

Miss Spink settled a purple hat on her head. It had a point that came down between her eyes, and on the front was an eye. Behind the eye a floppy blue feather stuck up. "Oh, your tea leaves, dears. They'll tell me your future. Drink up, then, go on."

Katie and Coraline each picked up a teacup and began to drink.

"No, not all of it, not all of it!"

They slowed down their drinking.

"That's right. Now, Caroline, hand it over. I'll do you first, since you are younger."

Coraline carefully handed over her cup. Miss Spink swirled it a few times and looked in.

"I see...I see...I see that your future is uncertain, Caroline."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Coraline asked, confused.

"It means," Miss Spink said, "that you are at a turning point. Something good may happen, something bad may happen, or nothing may happen. That is what I see. Now, Cathy, your turn."

Katie skeptically gave her cup to the woman. Miss Spink swirled it twice and looked in, then swirled it several more time, each time looking more worried. She looked up at Katie.

"Oh...oh Cathy. Cathy, Cathy, Cathy!"

Katie waited expectantly.

"You are in terrible danger!"

Katie sat up straight, staring at the woman.

"Oh, give me that cup, April, your eyes are going!" Miss Forcible snatched the hat off Miss Spink's head and began to slowly and carefully bring it up toward her own head.

"_My_ eyes? _You're_ blind as a bat!" Miss Spink grabbed the hat back. She held the cup up for Miss Forcible to peer at through her glasses.

"Well, now...um, not to worry, child."

Miss Spink's eyebrows went up.

"It's _good_ news."

Miss Spink rolled her eyes and shook her head.

"There's a tall, handsome beast in _your_ future," Miss Forcible continued.

"A _what_?" Katie and Coraline said at the same time.

"Miriam, really! You're holding it wrong." Miss Spink turned the cup so Miss Forcible could see what she meant. "See? Danger!"

"What do you see?" Katie asked curiously.

Miss Spink said, "I see a very peculiar hand..."

"_I_ see a giraffe," Miss Forcible said, twisting the cup back around.

"Giraffes don't just fall from the sky, Miriam," Miss Spink said with annoyance.

Of _course_, that was the moment the taffy chose to relinquish its hold on the pipe. It fell down and the bowl smashed into little glass shards mixed with pieces of taffy. Coraline and Katie fell backwards on the sofa, Miss Spink nearly fell over as she reflexively lifted her walker, Miss Forcible threw her hands up in the air and lost hold of the teacup, which crashed to the floor behind her, and the dogs all jumped and barked.

Katie looked down at the remains of the taffy bowl. "Well," she asked, "what should I do?"

"Never wear green in your dressing room," Miss Spink said, edging in front of Miss Forcible.

"Acquire a very tall stepladder," said Miss Forcible, edging in front of Miss Spink.

"And be very, very careful," Miss Spink said, pushing Miss Forcible to the side. Miss Forcible turned and knocked Miss Spink over with her bust, then smiled and fiddled with her hair as though she was the star of the show.

Miss Spink got to her feet, looking rather angry, but it soon faded. "Now, was there something you came to tell us?" Both actresses leaned in.

Katie and Coraline looked at each other and reconsidered their purpose.

"No, guess not," Coraline sighed, standing up.

"Thank for the tea, though," Katie added as they picked up their coats and hat and walked toward the door. The dogs quickly hopped back onto the sofa.

"Toodle-oo," said Miss Forcible.

"Cheery-bye," Miss Spink added after them.

As the girls went through the curtain, they heard Miss Forcible ask, "Do you have any nice Queens for mummy?"

One of the dogs yipped sadly.

*

*

*

*

Hey, it's ME again! I am _**so**_ sorry for not updating in forever, I got sidetracked by the Chronicles of Narnia archive. However, I am done with that and will hopefully be posting a chapter every few days. Or at least I'll do my best. Review please? And if you want to flame me for taking so long, do it. I need every little bit of guilt I can get so that this never happens again.


	10. The Village Stalker

Chapter 10: The Village Stalker

Katie closed the door behind them, and she and Coraline walked up the stairs.

"Danger?" Coraline said, puzzled.

"Yeah, that was weird," Katie replied as they reached the top of the stairs. The mist from before was now thick all over and reached to Coraline's waist. It was like sinking halfway into a cloud with each step, but without the feeling of getting stuck.

They had just turned left around the corner and towards the front steps when Katie stopped. She cocked her head to one side and frowned. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" Coraline said, stopping also.

"Hmm." Katie thought a moment, then smirked. "Just follow my lead." She turned around and began walking back the way they had come.

"The car?" Coraline said, raising one eyebrow.

"Just come on."

Coraline shrugged and followed her sister as Katie flounced along pretending to be completely oblivious. The two girls passed the entrance to the ladies' apartment and jumped down the steps in two bounds, past a dead tree that had fallen down. After a few more paces, Katie sneaked a look behind her.

"Gotcha," she whispered, and quickly circled back behind Coraline.

Coraline turned. "What the—oh!"

"Whoa!"

"You!" Katie yelled, frowning fiercely at Wybie. One of the microscope lenses on his mask had been replaced with a long S-shaped tube that acted as a periscope. Said mask was now in Katie's hand, and Wybie looked very uncomfortable.

"How'd you know he was there?" Coraline asked curiously.

"I heard the clicky of his thingamajig when he rotated it," Katie said, smirking. "I have very good ears."

Wybie cringed.

"Great," Coraline groaned. "The village stalker." She leaned over and punched Wybie's arm. He jumped away, rubbing the spot she'd hit.

"Ow! I—I wasn't stalking you!" he protested. "We're hunting banana slugs."

"Banana slugs?" said Katie.

"Who's 'we'?" said Coraline.

"Mrrrrow." Part of Wybie's coat began to move in a lumpy fashion. The lump skittered up to his neckline and the black cat the girls had met two days earlier poked its head out. It then climbed out of the boy's jacket and curled around his shoulders.

"Ha!" Katie said, laughing. "Your cat's not wild, he's a wuss-puss!"

The cat arched its back and hissed at her.

"What?" said Wybie, annoyed. "He hates to get his feet wet. Geez." He walked around the girls, snatching his mask back from Katie and putting it on.

Katie crossed her arms and looked up and away. "Wuss-puss," she whispered in a sing-song tone.

Coraline frowned at her sister as the cat looked sharply at Katie. Wybie put his mask on and rotated it so the tube was pointed toward the ground. He then pulled a pair of tongs with concave ends out of his pocket and clicked them together. He put his head down so he could look through the mist and began to walk around hunched over. The cat sat straight up on his back.

Coraline crossed her arms. "So, those dolls. Did _you_ make them look like us?"

Wybie was preoccupied. "Oh, no," he said somewhat absently. His voice was muffled by the mask. "I found it that way. Wait—" He straightened up abruptly and turned to face them. The cat barely managed to stay on by curling around the boy's neck.

"Did you say dolls?"

"Um, yeah?" Katie said, rolling her eyes.

Coraline pulled the doll out of her pocket and held it up. "Katie's and this one," she clarified.

"Well, I only found one. That was the one with the blue raincoat."

"It's _teal_," Katie muttered.

"So where'd _this_ one come from?" Coraline wanted to know, brandishing her doll at him.

"How should I know?" Wybie said, turning back to his slug hunting.

Katie and Coraline stared at each other. Tucking the doll back in her pocket, Coraline brought the conversation back to her question. "So, did you make _it_ look like _Katie_?"

"Aw, no, I found it that way. It's older than Grandma." The cat leaped off Wybie's back and onto the roof of the car. The boy turned around and stood, gesturing at the imposing pink structure behind the girls. "Old as this house, probably." He bent down again, this time slowly moving towards them. Coraline and Katie could see his head twisting back and forth as he examined the ground.

"Come on," Katie said skeptically. "Long black braids, my sneakers and rubbers, and my _teal_ raincoat?" The cat leaped off the car and headed up the fallen tree towards the roof.

Wybie wasn't paying attention. "Dang!" He leaped up out of the mist, holding something in his tongs. He pushed back his mask, revealing a huge smile. "Check out _Slugzilla_!" He dramatically held his tongs up rather close to the girls' faces.

What he was holding was a long, fat, yellow-with-brown-patches-on-the-back, slimy slug. The stalks on its head were moving around.

"Eww!" Coraline yelped, jumping back. Katie reached out and pushed the slug away. Wybie's excitement seemed to vanish at their reaction.

"You're just like them," Coraline complained, crossing her arms.

Wybie and Katie looked at the slug. "Huh?" they said together.

"I mean our _parents_," Coraline clarified, shooting a glare at her sister. "They never listen to us either."

"Uh-huh," said Wybie, not paying attention. "Do you mind?" He thrust a camera at Katie. She reluctantly took it and put it up to her eye.

Wybie then commenced to do a series of silly things with "Slugzilla." First, he held it up with the tongs and pretended to take a bite, chewing and making satisfied noises as though he were actually eating it. Next, he held it up to his nose with his fingers and stretched it out as though he _really_ needed to blow his nose. After that, he held the slug close to the camera, making it look like "Slugzilla" really _was_ Slugzilla—in other words, a slug version of Godzilla—and was terrorizing the town, and pretended to be frightened, even to the point of yelling. Finally, he held one arm up to his face and shiftily looked back and forth. He then dropped his arm and leaned in towards the camera, showing that he now sported a slimy, yellow, moving mustache.

"Eww!" Katie said, laughing. Coraline giggled. Wybie removed the slug from his face and tossed it back behind him. There was a quiet plop as it landed and a small billow of mist sprang up.

Wybie retrieved his camera from Katie and tucked it inside his coat. Then he wrung his hands nervously. "You know, I've never been inside the Pink Palace." He took his mask off and tucked it under his right arm.

"You're kidding," Coraline said, shocked.

"Grandma'd _kill_ me," Wybie responded, turning towards them. "Thinks it's...dangerous or something."

Katie looked back at the house. "Dangerous?" she asked. The cat watched the three children from the roof.

"Well—" Wybie headed toward the front steps, and the girls followed him. They left trails in the mist which were quickly filled in. "She had a twin sister."

"So?" Katie asked as they walked back up the steps, taking them one by one this time.

"When they were kids, Grandma's sister disappeared," the boy continued.

The cat narrowed its eyes as it tracked them.

"She says she was stolen," Wybie finished.

The cat's eyes grew wide and it whisked around to hiss at the window to the girls' room—

Katie's doll was sitting on the window seat and leaning against the window—definitely _not_ where she had left it.

"Stolen?" Coraline said skeptically.

"What do _you _think?" Katie asked Wybie as the three reached the front steps where he'd left his motorbike.

"Uh, I—I don't know," he stammered uncomfortably. "Maybe she just...ran away." He pulled his bike upright and mounted it. The cat jumped down off the porch roof to land on the boy's back.

"You can't honestly expect us to think you believe that," Katie started to say, when someone else interrupted her.

"Wyborne!" The distant shout was accompanied by the sound of a bell being beaten furiously. Wybie and the cat both looked off into the distance, the boy with a nervous look on his face. He quickly put his mask on.

"Look, I—I gotta go."

"Wait a minute!" Coraline cried, but he was already off. His mask flipped down as he jumped the steps and disappeared in a billow of mist along with the cat.

"Huh," said Katie, as she and Coraline shared a confused look.


	11. Come On, Corrie!

Chapter 11: Come On, Corrie!

_**That evening...**_

"What are you _doing_?"

"Well, mice are said to be rather fond of certain types of coagulated milk products," Katie explained matter-of-factly, continuing to crumble the bits of yellow-orangey stuff she was holding. "And I want to see if my dream was a dream or not. So I'm putting out bits of coagulated and processed milk product for the mouse I saw last night." She put the last pieces on the floor by the door and stood, then walked to the dresser and picked up a brush.

"That _is_ cheese, right?" said Coraline cautiously.

"Yes."

Coraline shook her head. "Katie, you really _are_ a dork."

"Gee..." Katie pretended to sigh disappointedly. "I was hoping that you could come up with something a little more original. _Really_, Coraline, as my sister you ought to be able to do that."

Coraline rolled her eyes. "So do you think the whole 'danger' thing we got from the neighbors is weird?" she asked, bouncing up and down on her bed.

Katie was brushing her hair. "Well," she said slowly. "Sort of. I mean, yeah, it's weird, but I'd be willing to bet that those actresses are like that most of the time, Mr. B seems like he's not all there, and as for Wybie, well, he's just _strange_."

"Speaking of the actresses," Coraline said, crossing her arms, "I heard you say, 'They're _that_ kind of actress.' What's that supposed to mean?"

Katie froze. _Oops, shouldn't have said that,_ she thought. _Good job, Katie. Now you have to deal with a curious little sister who doesn't need to know any_ _of that stuff yet. If ever._

"Um...how long does it take for poison oak to go away?"

Coraline groaned and scratched her hand. "You just _had_ to remind me of that. Thanks a bunch. Why do you like Wybie?"

Katie—who had been about to mentally congratulate herself that she had successfully changed the subject—put the brush back on the dresser and stared at her sister. "This must be rush hour on the Subject Change highway. First going from cheese and dorks to danger, and then from poison oak to Wybie? _You're_ random tonight."

"Yup, I'm the queen of randomness. So why do you like Wybie?"

"What makes you think I like Wybie?" Katie asked, puzzled.

Coraline shrugged. "I don't know, it just seems like you do."

"Even if I did, why do _you_ care?" Katie said curiously. She began to smile. "Are you _jealous_?"

"No!" Coraline yelled. "He is so annoying!"

Katie sat down on her bed, facing Coraline. "No comment," she said dryly.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?" Coraline said suspiciously.

"It means that I'm _not_ going to say that's exactly how some couples at my school started out. Thinking each other were extremely annoying," Katie said airily. "So, no comment."

"Argh!" Coraline slid off her bed and scrambled towards Katie.

"No wrestling on the bed!" Katie yelled as she jumped out of the way, out into the middle of the room. "It's dangerous!"

"Like I care!"

"Oof! Not the Corrie linebacker tackle!"

"Admit it, you always knew I was good at football!"

"Yeah, for such a skinny little thing! How on earth do you manage to successfully tackle people when you weigh all of eighty-three pounds and stand four feet four inches tall?"

"Maybe I'm just _good_ at it!"

"Yeah, right!"

The two girls rolled back and forth several times.

"Ugh, I surrender, let me up!" Coraline was on the bottom.

"Only if you say you'll come with me tonight." Katie was on the top, laughing.

"Come where?"

"To the other world. You know, with the perfect parents and food that actually tastes _good_?"

Coraline groaned. "Aw, Katie, that's only a dream."

"Then it shouldn't be too hard to promise," Katie pointed out.

"Fine. I'll come with you to your non-existent perfect world. _Now_ will you let me up?"

_Squeak._

"Mmm..." Katie rolled over. "Wha ma hoddog squeegen...?"

_Squeak, squeak._

"Huh...wha...oh!"

Katie came fully awake in time to see three mice hop through the crack in the door. One picked up a cheese crumble between its little paws and hopped back out.

"Corrie, Corrie, wake up, it's happening again!" Katie yelled excitedly, but quietly. She tried to leap out of her bed, but ended up tumbling out instead, tangled up in her sleeping bag. The resulting _thud_ roused Coraline—to some extent.

"Fie mo minnis," she said sleepily, and closed her eyes again.

"Nope." Katie disentangled herself from the sleeping bag, crawled over to Coraline's bed, and stood up to pull back Coraline's sleeping bag. The younger girl protested unintelligibly. Katie paid her no mind.

"You promised, and you'll come, even if I have to carry you." Katie looked Coraline over. "Which I guess I have to."

After some awkward contortions and more sleepy murmuring from Coraline, Katie got her barely-conscious sister onto her back. Looking over at the door, she saw that the last mouse was holding the last bit of cheese and watching her intently. If Katie, as a dork, hadn't known it was anatomically impossible, she would have thought the mouse was grinning. Then it hopped away through the door.

"Okay, show time." Katie followed the mouse, pushing the door open with her foot and nearly losing her balance in the process. She didn't notice that, like the night before, the window showed a misty spiral instead of a night sky. When she—and Coraline, who was mumbling something about fourth down—reached the top of the stairs, Katie saw that all three mice were waiting on the first landing and looking up. Once they saw her, they hopped down the stairs.

Katie groaned. "I can't go that fast carrying her! Wait up!" She slowly made her way down to the landing. "I can't believe I'm talking to mice." Turning to descend the rest of the staircase, she realized that the mice were once again waiting for her at the bottom. Now they hopped off down the hallway, in the direction of the living room and the little door.

"Well," Katie whispered in surprise. "I didn't actually think they'd wait for me. Maybe they can understand what I'm saying?" Carefully she went down the last two pieces of staircase and set off down the hall. When she entered the living room, the mice were all waiting in the middle.

"Thank you."

_Squeak._

_Squeak._

_Squeak._

And they hopped over to the door and through the crack. Katie walked over and carefully set Coraline down, propped up against the wall, then crouched down so they were face to face.

"Okay Corrie, time to wake up. I can haul you out of bed, I can carry you down the stairs and into the living room, but I can't push you through the tunnel."

"Unngh..."

"Wake up!" Katie gently shook her sister.

"Whazza hooza? Where am I?" Coraline rubbed her eyes.

Katie rolled hers. "You're in the living room, silly."

"How did I get down here?"

"I carried you."

"Nuh-uh."

"Uh-huh, and I am _not _letting you start arguing. It's time for you to keep your promise."

Coraline groaned. "Katie, that world doesn't exist."

"Oh yeah? Watch _this_." Katie pulled Coraline over until she was sitting in front of the door, then grabbed the door and yanked it open. Light streamed out, turning the girls' skin blue and purple and pink, and out of the tunnel came the faint silvery sound Katie had heard the night before. At the end they could see the crack of light made by the other door.

Coraline's mouth dropped open. "That's—that's—that's impossible!"

Katie laughed quietly. "I _told_ you it was there. After you." She gave Coraline a little push.

"Oh no, no, I couldn't possibly, it's your world after all," Coraline stammered, scrambling backwards. Katie reached out and grabbed her.

"You promised," the older girl pointed out.

"There is that," Coraline admitted. She slowly crawled into the tunnel. Katie followed her, smiling. When they reached the other end, Coraline pushed open the door and crawled out. "We went in a circle," she said confusedly, standing up and looking around.

"That's what I thought too," said Katie, standing up herself. "But look at the painting above the fireplace."

Coraline looked. "So?"

"So, he's happy. Look at him. He's licking his ice cream cone with a smile. Not crying because it fell."

"Huh. What's that humming?"

"Isn't it pretty? That's the Other Mother. Let's go see what she's cooking tonight."

"Okay," Coraline said doubtfully.

"You'll like her, I promise." Katie thought a moment. "At least once you get past the button eyes." They walked down the hall and through the dining room, which tonight was dark, and stopped at the kitchen door.

The kitchen table was set for four. In the center was a large basket lined with a white napkin and piled high with various types of large muffins. There were also a pitcher of orange juice, a container of syrup, and a stick of butter on the table. On the counter behind the table was a huge stack of waffles next to a wafflemaker.

The Other Mother was standing at the stove, humming. Tonight she wore black pants with a thin red band above the cuff, red slippers, and a black hip-length dress with small white polka dots and red trim. When she turned and smiled, they could see that over the dress she wore a dark pink apron that tied in the back and had a thin white scalloped edging, as did the triangular pocket on one side.

"Welcome back, Katie. Hello, Coraline."

"Geez, you weren't kidding about the eyes," Coraline whispered. Katie elbowed her.

"Hi," Coraline said nervously.

"Hi!" Katie exclaimed, walking over. Coraline followed her.

"So thoughtful of you to send this nice cheddar, girls," said the Other Mother.

"Cheddar?" Coraline asked. She and Katie looked down. On the stove were two frying pans. One held small sausages that were browning; the other, the one directly in front of the Other Mother, was full of cooking scrambled eggs. The Other Mother was grating cheese onto the eggs.

"Oh!" Katie said in understanding, and whispered to Coraline, "The mice bait."

The Other Mother finished grating, tapped the grater to loosen any stuck bits of cheese, and set it down on the counter. She turned to the girls. "Would you go fetch your father? I bet he's hungry as a pumpkin by now," she said brightly.

Katie and Coraline looked at each other. "You mean our _other_ father," Katie said, emphasizing the "other."

The Other Mother held up one finger with a slight frown. "Your better father, dears." She smiled again and gestured toward the window. "He's out in the garden."

Coraline looked at her quizzically. "But our parents don't have _time_ to garden."

"Sh sh!" The Other Mother reached into a bowl on the counter and pulled out two strawberries. She popped one into each girl's mouth.

"Mmm!" Coraline and Katie exclaimed, looking happily at the ripe, tasty, dark red berries they held.

"Go on," the Other Mother said laughingly, gently prodding them. Katie and Coraline finished their berries with smiles as they walked off toward the side door, which would lead them to the garden.

* * *

The "I'm the queen of randomness" was intended as a belated birthday present for a faithful reviewer who has since changed her name.


	12. Double Garden

TVTropes has this to say about "Dead Fic":

_A fic whose chapters are spaced with wider updates each time. While this may be the result of a writer working for an overall better product, there is a higher chance of the writer getting derailed by work or personal life. Eventually the fic stops updating, and the reader is left wanting. **The death knell comes when, rather than simply coming out with a new chapter, the author just assures the audience they haven't given up.** Although rarely, RARELY, the fic in question may update again - sometimes just so the author can state outright that it's a Dead Fic or on Permanent Hiatus. (Or in that matter leaving a note at the end of a chapter and telling what was supposed to happen.)_

Emphasis mine. _That_ is the reason I have never posted an AN saying "I'm still working on this."

My writing style has changed immensely during the hiatus, or at least it seems so to myself. I am attempting to partially recreate the style used in the first eleven chapters. I have also learned a lot about fandom, and will be editing some of my earlier chapters slightly.

Here's a little guide. **Written in February 2010**. Yes, I really did stop in the middle of a sentence. _Written in February 2011_. Written end of May 2012.

I cranked it out because it was just ridiculous to go any longer since the last update. And because an _entire_ awesome, cool, LONG series was written by Marquis Carabas in the last year and I woefully had no updates at all. And because Sagaverse plot bunnies keep bugging me and I can't post them until after I write the Saga and I promised myself I wouldn't start seriously writing the Saga til I finished CMK. (Sagaverse is my other Coraline universe, an AU of Call Me Katie)

Oh, and apologies to everyone to whom I promised this chapter way back in February...

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.

Chapter 12: Double Garden

**The girls walked out onto the porch. As they watched, a waning half moon rose. When the moon's rays touched the garden, two red-flowered trees** _slowly untwisted, rising upward as they did so. As a strange tree-like thing uncurled in the middle of the garden, several little golden lights fluttered around the two flowered trees, kindling the flowers into glowing red clusters._

_Katie and Coraline reached the iron gate and Coraline pushed at it. The two sides swung open with a creak and the girls stepped through, looks of awe on their faces. Plants in the small plot in front of them pushed up through the soil._ Before Coraline had a chance to bend down and closely examine the plot, several bright golden hummingbirds swooped down and hovered, wings humming, in front of the girls as if saying hello. They could have been made of gold instead of only colored that way; their feathers shon and glinted in the bright moonlight. They were the lights that had made the trees glow red.

Both girls stood in awe as the pretty birds circled them and then flew to the plants in front of them. Tall, covered, pitcher-like flowers grew up from the soil, each a different mottled mixture of green and orange and yellow and even some red around the top, and each with several long leaves to match. The hummingbirds flitted about, dipping their long beaks into each flower, and lights began to glow in the base of every bloom.

Katie and Coraline split to walk around the plot. As Coraline stepped past the final flower, the covering leaf abruptly flipped backwards and a button-eyed frog popped up to croak in a hoarse bass. The surprise coupled with the animal's odd light-blue-and-red coloring made the girls laugh.

The hummingbirds also split, some flying up both side paths and wakening the large red flowers that grew along and on the inner stone wall. These flowers outwardly resembled huge blooms of the "bleeding heart" flower, but no bleeding heart ever actually beat as these did, light pulsing in their cores. Other golden birds flittered around the plots nearer to the edge of the garden, bringing light and life to transparent pink tube flowers, smaller blue flowers with long orange stems that grew in dome formations, red-and-yellow petaled flowers in bushes, and vaguely fern-like plants with huge white leaves.

Katie and Coraline trotted up the left path, pausing frequently to gape and marvel at all the different kinds of flowers. Orangey-brown creepers twined along the cobblestones in their wake and under their very feet, sprouting single petals in varying shades of white, pink, and peach. The girls had nearly reached the bridge when Coraline grabbed Katie's arm and gave an excited cry, pointing.

Something had just come into sight from behind one of the small rolling hills on the outside of the garden. It seemed to be a blue metal contraption that bore an exceeding resemblance to a praying mantis. Round yellow headlights formed eyes, a pair of legs in the front provided motion, and two wheels in the back were turned by two more pairs of metal legs. As it walked—there was no other word for it—along the ridges, the head turned from side to side, spitting seeds onto the ground. On the tail end hung a watering can, from which poured a stream of water that sprinkled the ground. Odd flowers whose many petals rather resembled teaspoons sprouted behind the mantis, their color an unusual deep purplish-black.

The Other Father sat perched on the mantis' back, just behind its head. He had added a worn, floppy tan cowboy hat to his robe and pants of the night before. He looked over and spotted the girls.

"Heeeeeyy!" he cried, waving at them.

"We _love_ your garden!" Katie shouted happily, cupping her hands around her mouth to be heard over the mantis tractor.

"_Our_ garden, girls! What's ours is yours!" the Other Father called, smiling and spreading his arms out wide to encompass everything.

"_Black aeonium!_" Coraline squealed, running over to examine the flowers being planted by the tractor.

Katie laughed at her sister's unabashed enthusiasm, then yelped as her feet were attacked by several yellow flowers that had sprouted around her feet.

True, they were only snapdragons, but _this_ was no ordinary garden. The petals of _these_ snapdragons were shaped into vague but definite dragons' heads, and they darted here and there, yapping like puppies. Their gentle pokes produced quite a tickling effect. Katie hopped from one foot to the other, giggling, and promptly fell over. The snapdragons were quite pleased, and began poking her all over, yapping excitedly.

"Aah! Oh! Ahhh! Stop tickling me!" Katie chortled, rolling back and forth in helpless laughter.

On the tractor, the Other Father leaned to one side and put a hand to his ear.

"A daughter in distress! Sally forth, brave rescuers!"

He leaned down and scooped Coraline onto the tractor behind him; she shouted with surprise and then laughed as she saw Katie's predicament. As they passed a bizarre plant with a top like a huge cattail, the Other Father reached out and plucked an still-furled bulb-like flower and put it to his lips. With one blow, the flower opened, straightening out to become a trumpet-sized golden morning glory.

And as a trumpet the Other Father played it, tootling away like a hunting horn as the mantis pranced like a high-spirited horse across the bridge, Coraline holding tight to the man's waist when the mantis reared. As they left the bridge, two enormous jack-o-lanterns erupted from the pond, one on each side of the bridge. Fountains leapt up from within them, lifting the tops into the air, and white water lilies bloomed around the pumpkins.

Katie was still laughing helplessly, rolling from side to side and slapping ineffectually at the flowers. When the mantis halted next to her, the snapdragons stopped and turned their attention to its rider, stretching their stems to full length, mouths wide open.

The Other Father shook a finger at them. "Tickle no more..."

The praying mantis swiped one scythe-like front leg through the stems, severing them. The Other Father gathered the cut flowers together with a graceful sweep of his hand.

"...you dragonsnappers," he finished, and offered the bouquet to Katie. She got to her feet and took it with a relieved smile, giggling slightly as the snapdragons continued to yap, although less excitedly than they had before.

Now that the excitement was over, the girls remembered why they had come out in the first place.

"Well, s_he_ says it's time for dinner," Coraline said, poking her head around to look up at the Other Father.

"Breakfast!" Katie interjected, remembering the cheesy scrambled eggs and sausages. The sisters looked at each other, then at the Other Father.

"_Food_," they said, certain that _that_ would be a safe description.

He smiled. "Hop on, Katie. I want to show you girls something."

As soon as Katie had clambered onto the mantis and was securely seated above the left wheel, the Other Father pulled a lever. A double-bladed propeller unfolded from the back of the mantis and sprang upright, then whirled round and round. Gently, the mantis rose up into the air.

As they rose higher and higher, Katie and Coraline noticed something. On the ground, the garden was a riot of color, a mishmash of hues. But from up here, it was clear that the plants were _not_ randomly situated.

"Corrie..." Katie said slowly. "Does that look like—"

"It's a face!"

And so it was. The path and plot at the front of the garden were a neck and dimpled chin, and the pulsing red hearts lined a small half-moon pond of white water lilies to form a mouth. The rolling hills on which the aeonium grew resembled waves of hair. The curly tree and bridge at the center of the garden together were a pointed nose, and all over the garden the whites and oranges and pinks combined with the path's creepers to imitate skin.

"It's _my_ face!" Coraline shrieked happily.

"No, it's not, not quite," Katie pointed out. "It's got my hair, from the aeonium, even if it's only shoulder length."

"But it's got _my_ eyes, see the pumpkins? And the red trees are freckles, and—whoa, I didn't even _notice_ that greenhouse when we were on the ground!"

"But it's definitely a dragonfly, like your barrette, and it's in the right place." Katie grinned. "This is _so_ cool."

"I can't _believe_ you did this!" Coraline exclaimed, almost bouncing from excitement.

"Mother said you'd like it," the Other Father said, turning to smile at the girls. "Boy, she knows you two like the back of her hand."

"No, do you think?" Katie said deadpan, and all three laughed.

They hovered in the air another minute or so, and then the Other Father piloted the mantis downward. They landed on the path right in front of the back porch. When they had all scrambled off, the Other Father clapped his hands twice and gave a sharp whistle. The mantis rose into the air once more—the resulting wind whipped the girls' hair around—and headed off in the direction of the greenhouse.

"And now," said the Other Father happily, "we eat."

.

"Mmm, so _good_," Coraline mumbled through a mouthful of waffles-and-strawberries.

"Yeah, nothing like our usual breakfasts," Katie agreed as she picked up her blueberry muffin.

"I _love_ dinner-breakfast-food," the Other Father said, grinning. His plate was piled extremely high with a sort of triple-decker sandwich of waffles, eggs, and strawberries. He plopped a fourth waffle on top, spooned more stawberries on top of it, and began to cut the stack.

The Other Mother had placed the bouquet of snapdragons in vase in the center of the table, and was feeding the excitable flowers bits of sausage. Her plate was empty. "Katie, Coraline, Mr. Bobinsky has invited you to come see the jumping mice perform after dinner!"

"_Really_? They're _real_?" Katie asked, dropping her fork in her eggs in surprise.

"Everyone at home's been saying it's all in Mr. B's head. I _knew_ they were wrong," Coraline said, pleased with this news.

"Well, everything's right in this world, kiddo," said the Other Father, grinning at Coraline. The Other Mother got up and walked around the table to put a hand on her husband's shoulder. She smiled.

"Your father and I will clean up, while you and your _friend_ head upstairs."

"Our friend?" Katie repeated, confused. All their friends were still in Michigan, unless in this world Mairee and Bran and Drew really _had_ come to Oregon already. And then it would only be _Katie's_ friend. She and Coraline didn't have many mutual friends due to their age difference.

_Even the doorbell sound is different here_, Katie thought as it rang. _Major instead of minor_.

"Oh, there he is now!" the Other Mother exclaimed.

_All of our mutual friends are girls. _Who_ is she talking about?_

The Other Mother walked over to the door and pulled it open.

_Oh. Him._

.

* * *

It's not a cliffhanger if everyone knows what'll happen next, right?

I did the black aeonium research AGES ago. It turns out there are no naturally black flowers, but black aeonium are this really dark purple, and they look a little like the blue flowers in the movie. Here's a picture of the garden I described in this chapter (also made ages ago): picsDOTlivejournalDOTcom/cal_yn/pic/000224e4

A line I _really_ wanted to use but couldn't find a good place for:

"If I'm the daughter in distress, does that make you the knights in shining orange PJs?"

For future reference, this chapter was posted on May 31st 2012. The previous chapter was posted on February 27th 2010. That's a gap of two years, three months, and four days.


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